The Hidden Curriculum

In this episode we talk with Trevon Logan about his workflow & tips for mentoring. Trevon is the Hazel C. Youngberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Dean, College of Arts and Sciences at "The" Ohio State University. Trevon holds a BS from University of Wisconsin, and PhD in economics from Berkeley. He is also an NBER fellow and director of the AEA mentoring program! He currently serves on the editorial boards of Explorations in Economic History, Historical Methods and Demographic Research. Professor Logan specializes in economic history, economic demography and applied microeconomics.

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:

Trevon's recommendation of the week is try different vinegars! Lots of things to explore so why not try a different vinegar on your next stop at the supermarket

Alex's recommendation is to use "issues" in Github to communicate with co-authors as oppose to emails! It almost work like chat for a specific project.

Sebastian's recommendation is to add a bit of evaporated milk in your "home" ramen. Makes things more creamy. I got this tip Dr. Guanyi Yang. Second is to use the "Archive" feature in your email. Start using it now and start clearing your inbox! Archiving just puts emails in a folder and out of your inbox, so if you've dealt with something, then archive it. 

This week we talk with Jevay Grooms. Jevay is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Economics at Howard University. She is an applied microeconomist with research areas of interests that lie at the intersection of public economics, health economics, and studies of poverty and inequality. 

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.

Notes:

Jevay talked about National Panel Study of COVID-19, which is a on-going survey with questions regarding how people have been affected by COVID19. Jevay has a set of papers using these data set and you can find more information about them here. She also has a piece summarizing what we know on how COVID has affected people's mental health on the Ashecon newsletter which can be found here. Finally she wanted to promote the AEA summer program. A program by the American Economic Association aimed at underrepresented people in the economics profession who are thinking about going to a PhD program in Economics but are not quite sure. This is a great program for them!

Jevay's recommendation of the week is a quote from the CDC: "Be Kind to your Mind". It's a simple quote that reminds us that as we need to be kind to other people, our bodies, we also need to be kind to our minds. Keep that in mind ;).

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to think about two quotes at the same time: "Perfect is the enemy of good" and "Incremental is the enemy of the fundamental". These are two things that are always at odd with each other, specially in the policy making world. Be aware of who is making what type of argument when talking to people!

Alex's recommendation of the week is to use headspace! an app that helps your with relaxation and "winding" down, specially right before going to bed. 

In this episode we talk with Delegate Sally Hudson about her transition out of academia into public service. Sally is labor economist who studies recruiting and retention in the public sector. In addition to being a teacher and a community organizer she is also a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, representing the 57th district. She holds a PhD in Economics from MIT and a BA from Sandford. In this podcast she shared what her journey was and her take on how junior and non-juniors could start thinking about affecting policy. 

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:

Sally came in with a cooking-rec of the week and that is to put peanut sauce on pizza! Try it before you form opinions! Our second recommendation of the week is from Alex, and he recommends to try marmite as a seasoning item. Put it in your chili and let us know! Sebastian's cooking recommendation is to have hoisin sauce at home. It's somewhat sweet, deep sauce that goes with most things!

Alex has another-one (cue DJ Khaled) which is to check Color Brewer 2. It's a website you can thinker with to find a combination of colors that are friendly towards individual with color-blindness. 

In this episode we talk about how to deal with co-authors as a junior person, how to divvy up labor and setting expectations. This topic was brought to us by Ebehi Iyoha. Ebehi is a PhD student  in Economics at Vanderbilt University and a Job Market Candidate this year! She studies study inter-firm networks and their impact on economic growth through firm productivity and international trade. She is also a columnist for Stears Business where she talks about the Nigerian economy (click here).

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.

Shownotes:

Ebehi's fun fact is that she is been participating in "NaNoWriMo" or National Novel Writing Month since 2009. This is a time in a year when people commit to writing a novel in a single month. It's a very awesome initiative and you can learn more about it on their site: https://nanowrimo.org

We also talk about a book that Alex and Ebehi enjoyed called "Who Fears Death", this is a science fantasy novel by Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor. You can find this and other books we've recommended in our Bookshop "Book list". (click here)

Ebehi has two recommendations of the week, first is a novel called "A Girl is a Body of Water" by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. A story about a young girl who does not know much about her family history and her journey to find it. (click here)

Her second recommendation of the week is to check out pandas-profiling, a python package for quick and easy exploratory data analysis. (click here)

Alex's recommendation of the week is the application called Cyberduck. It's similar to filezilla and great for sharing and storing files across many devices. (click here)

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is the free ebook "Publishing in the Economics Profession" by Sebastian Galiani & Ugo Panizza as editors. They have several articles on issues regarding the publishing process and it's a great resource for starting to dig into that topic. (click here)

In this episode, we talk with Trang Hoang about preparing for video interviews and presentations. Trang is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Economics at Vanderbilt University. She was an International Economics Ph.D. Fellow at Dartmouth College in the fall of 2019. Her areas of research include international trade, development, and applied microeconometrics. Her job market paper has received two awards: one for "Best Graduate Student Paper" in the FREIT-EIIT conference and a second one for "Best Paper in Applied Economics" from the Econometric Society Winter School at the Delhi School of Economics. You can check it out here.

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 this episode we talked about hardware that we use. We don't think you need to invest as much as we did, but if you want to know what we use, for microphone we use the Samson Q2U USB. For Webcam we both use the Logitech C920.  We also recommend getting some "light" whether that's coming from a ring light, or a lamp.

In terms of recommendation of the week, Trang recommends getting and Apple iPad with the apple pencil. It's a pricey item but she feels she has gotten value out of it.

Sebastian's recommendation is to check the application called readwise. Is an application that takes the highlights you've made on many e-books or articles and sends you an email with some of those highlights every so often. This is a great way to "remember" what you once highlighted.

Alex's recommendation of the week is the paper "The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy" by Joseph S. Shapiro. Here the abstract of that article: "This paper describes a new fact, then analyzes its causes and consequences: in most countries, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers are substantially lower on dirty than on clean industries, where an industry's “dirtiness” is defined as its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per dollar of output. This difference in trade policy creates a global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions in internationally traded goods and so contributes to climate change. This global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions totals several hundred billion dollars annually. The greater protection of downstream industries, which are relatively clean, substantially accounts for this pattern. The downstream pattern can be explained by theories where industries lobby for low tariffs on their inputs but final consumers are poorly organized. A quantitative general equilibrium model suggests that if countries applied similar trade policies to clean and dirty goods, global CO2 emissions would decrease and global real income would change little." (Click here)

In this episode we talk with Marianne Bitler on general tips to keep in mind while in graduate school. Marianne Bitler is a Professor of Economics at UC Davis. She is an applied microeconomist whose line of work lies within public economics, health economics and labor economics. She has also worked at UC Irvine, the Public Policy Institute of California, the RAND Corporation, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Trade Commission. She is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at IZA. She just completed chairing a National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Panel on Improving Consumer Data for Food and Nutrition Policy Research for the Economic Research Service, USDA and she is a co-editor of the American Journal of Health Economics.

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:

We refer to a "Failure CV". The path to have a "successful" CV is non-linear, and we usually only see people's success (i.e. published papers) but we don't get to see their failures. Doug Webber, has an example of this on his website.

Marianne's book recommendation is "Administrative Burden: Policymaking by other Means" Donald P. Moynihan (Author)  Pamela Herd (Author). (click here)

Alex's recommendation of the  week is to "print like a referee" so that you can see the tables and figures as referees may see them.

Sebastian's recommendation is the book "Range" by David Epstein. The thesis of the book is simple, in a world that values specialization, having "range" could prove a very useful tool to pair up with specialization. (click here). We talk about the book "Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way" by Steven Pressfield (click here)

****************Contest Rules***********************

- You have to be a Job Market Candidate (Defined as someone who is finishing their PhD and going on the Job Market to get their first job after graduated school)

- Listen to today's episode and make a note of our guest's recommendation of the week

- Choose one of your favorite episode

- Send us an email to [email protected] with Marianne's recommendation and your favorite episode! Also gives us your name and your email address. You could also leave us a voice message on Anchor, be sure to leave us your email and name!

- You have 7 days from the episode to make you submissions. That is, we will take submissions until December 23rd

- We will randomize the entries and pick a winner. We are hoping to announce the 1st winner on our subsequent podcast (we'll send you an email if you win)

In this episode we talk about how to approach networking with Jennifer Doleac. Jennifer Doleac is an Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University, and Director of the Justice Tech Lab. She is also a Research Fellow at IZA, and a Research Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty, the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. Jennifer studies crime and discrimination, with particular emphases on prisoner reentry and the effects of technology on public safety. She also organizes the Texas Economics of Crime Workshop (TxECW), and also has a podcast! Probable Causation, a podcast about law, economics, and crime.

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

We referred to Parkinson's law, which is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". For non-research tasks, Jen schedules a finite amount of time, and she aims to finish those task by the amount of time allotted. For research tasks, her schedule is more flexible as she just assigns a amount of time (e.g. 2 hours) but won't put a specific tasks to get done.

Jen also mentioned that she enjoys reading the book "The War of Art" right before a getting into a project to her get pumped up! Check this an other books recommendations in our ever-growing list of books recommended by our guests. (Click here).

Jen also recommends checking out gather.town and the podcast Women at Work (click here)

****************Contest Rules***********************

- You have to be a Job Market Candidate (Defined as someone who is finishing their PhD and going on the Job Market to get their first job after graduated school)

- Listen to today's episode and make a note of Jen's recommendation of the week

- Choose one of your favorite episode

- Send us an email to [email protected] with Jen's recommendation and your favorite episode! Also gives us your name and your email address. You could also leave us a voice message on Anchor, be sure to leave us your email and name!

- You have 7 days from the episode to make you submissions. That is, we will take submissions until December 15th

- We will randomize the entries and pick a winner. We are hoping to announce the 1st winner on our subsequent podcast (we'll send you an email if you win)

In this episode we talk with Benjamin Hansen. Ben is the WE Miner Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon. He is an applied-micro economist whose research focuses on crime, health, and other topics in labor and public economics. We talk with Ben about this transition from the private-consulting sector to academia.

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. @dsebastiantello

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

Notes: 

Ben recommends watch "unidentified" and learn the truth about unidentified objects in the world.

Alex recommends to check the app Zwift - an app for cyclers!

Sebastian recommends to schedule "calls" with friends and family. It may feel weird to put your loved ones in your schedule as a task, but it's a great way of getting it done! 

On this episode we talk with John Cawley on tips to prepare students for the job market. This episode is directed for people who are getting started with advising PhD Students. John talks about his process, and the process at Cornell. John is a Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, and the Department of Economics, at Cornell University. He is co-Director of Cornell's Institute on Health Economics, Health Behaviors and Disparities. His research focuses on the economics of risky health behaviors; in particular, those that relate to obesity.

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. @dsebastiantello

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

Notes: 

John invites everyone to check out the Virtual Seminar on the Economics of Risky Health Behaviors (VERB) on this site VERBseminar.org. John has also worked putting a job-market guide, you can find the updated version here (Click Here). He is also in the AEA ad hoc Committee on the Job Market and they put out reports on their site (Click Here)

Recommendation of the week:

John's recommendation of the week is to check the Netflix show "Love on the Spectrum".

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to get a monitor arm. There are many options, here is one that I've used this past year (Click Here)

Alex's recommendation of the week is the book "How to take Smart Notes" (Click Here). Alex also worked on a set of slides with job market tips and he is sharing it with us  (Click Here) 

This week we talk with Melissa Spencer about handling multiple projects. Melissa is a PhD student in Economics at the University of Virginia. She is a job market candidate this year! Melissa’s research focuses on well-being of women and minorities, across the areas of reproductive health, infectious diseases & domestic violence.

Alex Hollingsworth - is an Assistant Professor in the O’Neill School of Public and Environment Affairs at Indiana University. Follow Alex @ajhollingsworth

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

Links:

We were talking about how to improve "focus" during work. One technique is the Pomodoro technique. You only need a 25 minute timer, but if you care for more fancy apps, Sebastian uses Tide (https://tide.fm/en_US/). He has also heard good things from [Forest]. Alex uses Focus-to-do (https://www.focustodo.cn).

Melissa started her own chapter of women in economics at UVA. If you are interested in starting a chapter, she recommends checking out the resources from "Women in Economics at Berkeley" (http://calwomenofecon.weebly.com)

In terms of recommendation of the week. Melissa recommends speaking to people that are not economist about your own research.

Sebastian's recommendation is to have a "Nice Emails" folder. Save any email in PDF format in this folder for when you are feeling down but also for any potential review you may have in the future

Alex's recommendation of the week  is a software that blocks access to fun-website so you can concentrate on your work. It's called self-control (https://selfcontrolapp.com)