The Hidden Curriculum

In this episode, we talk with Julian Reif about setting up a research project folder for best replications purposes. Julian is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Economics at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on health policy evaluation and the value of health and longevity. Professor Reif received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and his BA from Vanderbilt University.

In this episode, we go over how to set up a research project folder structure. We follow the guide that Julian has on his page. [https://julianreif.com/guide/#folder-structure]. This is a great guide to follow for structuring all your projects. I usually have an "empty" project folder, and every time I start a new project, I copy and rename that folder for my new project.

We also have a companion video tutorial on how to do this, in which you can follow step-by-step how to do it. [https://youtu.be/KUtxJyauQ-o]

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.

During the episode, we talk about Julian's paper on teenage driving and mortality risk. You can find that paper here https://julianreif.com/research/reif.wp.driving.pdf

Recommendations of the week

Julian's recommendation of the week is to listen to a podcast while you exercise! His two recommendations are (1) Conversations with Tyler and (2) Mindscape. https://conversationswithtyler.com and https://www.mindescapepodcast.com

Alex’s tip of the week is to use code snippets when writing in latex and sublime text. Basically ways of automating annoying tasks. You can check out examples here: http://www.peterhaschke.com/workflow/2013/05/08/SLT2-Snippet.htmlFor example, you can type `fig` then hit tab and all the code to create a figure with a centered graphic will replace the `fig` text you typed, with your cursor in the place to add the appropriate file path. 

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to use the text-replacement app Autohotkey. This app allows you to map any keyboard combination to an action or other words. For example, I type "-zoom" for my personal zoom link, and my zoom link appears. https://www.autohotkey.com

In this episode we talk with Fenaba Addo about on how to talk to the media. Fenaba R. Addo, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Dr. Addo was the Lorna Jorgensen Wendt Associate Professor of Money, Relationships, and Equality (MORE) in the School of Human Ecology’s Department of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison prior to joining UNC and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Postdoctoral Scholar. She received her Ph.D. in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University and holds a B.S. in Economics from Duke University.

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University.

Show notes:

In the workflow section, Fenaba mentioned that she takes part of "Sunday Planning". That is have an overview of her schedule for the week. She tries schedule writing time during the mornings and schedule meetings during teaching days. Writing time can be understood as writing or research time (i.e. coding, reading, etc.). This takes about 30 min to an hour.

Fenaba's recommendation of the week is to start each class with a song, and if you can connect the topic of that lecture to the song! She says it's a fun way to set the mood for the class.

Alex's recommendation of the week is to use the feature on macs (and windows) that reads outloud your text. This is a great way to catch typos or odd-wording of the stuff you write! Perfect for emails

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is "The Public Professor: How to Use Your Research to Change the World" by M. V. Lee Badget. The work of academics can matter and be influential on a public level, but the path to becoming a public intellectual, influential policy advisor, valued community resource or go-to person on an issue is not one that most scholars are trained for. The Public Professor offers scholars ways to use their ideas, research and knowledge to change the world. You can find it with the rest of our books recommendations on our bookshop affiliate link [https://bookshop.org/shop/Hiddencurriculum]

Service! What is it good for? In this episode we talk with David Slusky about how to manage service as a junior person. David Slusky is an applied microeconomist. His research is on health economics labor economics and public policy. He is the De-Min and Chin-Sha Wu Associate Professor of economics at the University of Kansas, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Research fellow at IZA - Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany.  He's also Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies at KU, the founder of the Kansas Health Economics Conference, and a co-editor at the Journal of Policy Analysis & Management.

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University.

The matrix that we keep referring to can be found here: [Link Here]

Recommendations of the week:

David's first recommendation is any of the recs of the week: Harry Bosch's books, the second recommendation is the board game Mage Knight. David enjoys playing it with the whole fam!

Alex recommendation of the week: if you select zoom to be optimized for two screen, you can separate the gallery window from the main screen, this can be useful if you want to separate them!

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to check out the AEA research's highlight podcast, where they interview authors of papers published in AEA journals. It's a great way to consume research!

In this episode, we talk with Catherine Maclean, a co-editor for the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM), on how a journal works? What is the hierocracy and process behind the inner workings of an academic journal? Catherine is an Associate Professor of Economics at Temple University. Professor Maclean's research uses health and labor economic theory to empirically explore the causes and consequences of substance use, mental health, insurance coverage, and labor market outcomes. Professor Maclean is a Research Associate in the Health Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics. She is a Co-Editor at the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Professor Maclean's research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Cancer Society.

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.

Show Notes:

Check out the "TOPS" Seminar series at this link: https://www.tobaccopolicy.org.

The Tobacco Online Policy Seminar (TOPS) goal is to provide a free multidisciplinary, international forum for research using experimental or quasi-experimental variation (i.e., a well-defined counterfactual) to study nicotine-tobacco policies, with a particular interest in emerging tobacco products and modified risk tobacco products.

Recommendations of the week:

Catherine's recommendation of the week is to follow David Powell on Twitter. His handle is @thedavidpowell. His account is primarily lighthearted, punny jokes that relax the feed. Catherine's second recommendation is to get into legos!

Alex's recommendation of the week is to have an email template to reply to emails from students' requests about classes. Make sure you have several templates that you can copy and paste when responding to emails.

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to check out JPAM's closer look a podcast on the papers published on JPAM [link here]

In this episode we talk with Monica Aswani on the story of how she found a dissertation topic. Dr. Monica Aswani is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research focuses on the distributional consequences of health policy related to payment/delivery reform programs, social safety net eligibility and spending, and health insurance.

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University.

Recommendations of the week:

Monica's recommendation of the week is the book "Economization of Life" by Michelle Murphy. You can check this and all previous book's recommendations in our "Bookshop" library, this is a great way to support the podcast as well! [Link Here]

Alex's recommendation of the week is to do a "semester plan". Fortunately, we show you where to start, here is a link of a template for a semester plan. [Link Here]

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to check "Econimate" by Hoai-Luu Nguyen. These are animated-videos that explain papers in a easy way to digest. It's a great way to "keep up" with a literature or to use them in class!  https://www.econimate.com or the YouTube Channel.

This week we talk with Ivan Rudik and a document he has been using in order to respond to referee reports. Ivan is the  Ruth and William Morgan Assistant Professor of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. Ivan is an Environmental Economist with a PhD from University of Arizona who works on climate change and air pollution. 

We discussed a paper on the Journal of Economic Perspective titled "How to Write an Effective Referee Report and Improve the Scientific Review Process" by Jonathan B. Berk, Campbell R. Harvey and David Hirshleifer. (link here)

We talked about a document that Ivan uses to respond to referee's, you can download it here (link here) [https://github.com/hollina/template-referee-response]

Ivan's recommendation of the week is the book Piranesi (Link here)

Alex's recommendation of the week is to check Anki Flashcards, a great way to learn a language or any memory, driven topic! (Link here)

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to check EconBrew a list of economist who are always up to have a coffee all around the world! (Link here)

This episode we talk about specification charts with Ariel Ortiz Bobea. These are charts that visually show how the baseline estimate changes across many types of model adjustments. Ariel Ortiz-Bobea. Ariel is an Assistant Professor of Applied Economics and Policy. He is an applied economist with interests in agricultural, resource and development economics. Ariel was a fellow at Resources for the Future prior to Cornell & special assistant to the minister of the environment in the Dominican Republic prior to grad school. At present, his research program is broadly focused on agricultural sustainability issues with particular emphasis on the statistical and econometric evaluation of climate change impacts on agriculture and other sectors of the economy. 

To visually see what a specification chart looks like [click here].

To see AOB's thread on specification chart's and how to implement it in R [click here].

Ariel also spoke about OSWEET, the Online Summer Workshop in Environment, Energy, and Transportation (Economics) if you want more information. Find it here: http://edrub.in/osweet.html

If you want to find out more about the paper that Ariel referenced in the episode [click here]

Recommendations of the week:

Ariel Ortiz Bobea: Comment your code!

Alex Hollingsworth: for journals and professional organizations, create a password which has the name of the organization/journal in the password. That way the system is the same, it just changes by organization/journal.

Sebastian Tello-Trillo: If you are looking for great images/pictures that are "free" to use. Check unsplash. It is a great source of freely-usable images.

This week we talk with Dania Francis about the National Economic Association (NEA). Dania is an Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts Boston. Her current research involves using experimental and quasi-experimental methods to identify structural causes of racial and socioeconomic academic achievement gaps. She received her doctorate from Duke University and also holds a master’s degree from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College. She is also a board member of the National Economics Association and a National Academies of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

She is also in the board of the NEA. From the NEA's site: The National Economic Association (NEA) was founded in 1969 as the Caucus of Black Economists to promote the professional lives of minorities within the profession. In addition to continuing its founding mission, the organization is particularly interested in producing and distributing knowledge of economic issues that are of exceptional interest to promoting economic growth among native and immigrant African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color.

Dania has really interesting research on biases in schooling, you can find more information on her site: https://www.daniafrancis.com/research

We made reference to the minority report. Which is not the movie, but a report created by CSMGEP. The Minority Report, an annual newsletter, jointly with the American Society of Hispanic Economists (ASHE) and the National Economic Association (NEA). [Link here]

If you are interested in research that related to the topic of race, check out the great work put out by two journals: The Review of Black Political Economy and the Journal of Race, Economics and Uncertainty

Dania's recommendation of the week is a cooking tip or maybe a cleaning tip? The tip is "Don't out FOG down the drain". FOG meaning, Fats, Oils, and Grease or anything that constitutes within that category.

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to check the YouTube Channel from Ali Abdaal. He is an MD from London and has a lot of tips on productivity. Sebastian finds his demeanor refreshing and entertaining.

Alex's recommendation is to get a kitchen thermometer! A simple kitchen tool that can greatly improve your cooking! 

In this episode we talk with Lindsey Bullinger about her experience dealing with raising a child, while having a partner that works a lot!. Lindsey is n Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. Her research examines how public policies affect children and families’ health and well-being, especially low-income families. Lindsey has started to work on how the pandemic has affected domestic violence. She has a paper forthcoming at the American Journal of Health Economics (link here). She also wrote a piece for the Ashecon Newsletter talking about measuring domestic violence and child maltreatment (link here). Her work has been published in American Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, Review of Economics of the Household, Contemporary Economic Policy, ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Housing Policy Debate, Children and Youth Services Review, Health Services Research, American Journal of Public Health, JAMA Pediatrics, and Maternal and Child Health Journal. It has been funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Spencer Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trusts. She earned my Ph.D. from Indiana University in April 2018.

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University.

Lindsey's recommendation is to take "work walks". This means, having your schedule "zoom-meetings" as a phone conversation in which you can walk and talk at the same time. Two birds, one-stone!

Alex's recommendation of the week is the book "Statistical Rethinking", is a book that helps introduce Bayesian statistics from an intuitive way! In addition to the book, the author Richard McElreath has recorded lectures on Bayesian statistic that pair will with the book.

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is the application Castro. This is an app to consume podcasts. The main feature that makes it different from others is that you can set it up as an inbox, where you decide which episodes you want to listen or not. Is a great tool when you follow several podcasts, but you don't really want to listen to all episodes.