Best of #econtwitter - Week of February 19, 2023: interesting tweets
Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of Best of Econtwitter. Please submit suggestions — very much including your own work! — over email or on Twitter @just_economics.
Belated edition this week!
Interesting discussions
Preparing to talk to students about research advice / hidden curriculum.
Here are guesstimated base rates for converting ideas to papers.
^really too bad substack cuts off the images so you can’t see the images — but you can click through
This is why I’m a big fan of pre-docs. The process/reward structure for research vs courses are so different. So many students good at latter, start phd and excel in first/second year. Then spend 4-5 years deeply unhappy and floundering. Opportunity cost on those years is huge.
Shengwu Li @ShengwuLi
^more on predocs in the next section…
I've been co-editor at the Financial Analysts Journal for about 18 months now (I ❤️ it). I have a few tips that I hope current and future reviewers will find useful and constructive, and that I believe apply to all academic reviewers (at least in Finance). OK, here we go: 1/8
Remember how a couple days ago us educators were feeling comfortable that ChatGPT produces B essays & can't do citations & makes up stuff all the time?
I had the new Bing AI create an assignment and rubric. Then I had it write an essay in response.
Not perfect, but a huge leap.
how do meta-analyses ever conclude anything beyond “the entire literature is very bad and researchers should feel bad”
We currently have ~35 registered for the upcoming replication games in association with @UniofNottingham - we're looking for more participants (remote and in-person) in politics, health econ, econ history and macro!
If you have an economics Ph.D. or are currently studying for one:
Is economic theory a field in crisis?
^(see replies)
One of life's great disappointments is that only after you've done a huge amount of work on a topic can you make it seem so trivial as to be obvious.
@ben_golub And...the Econ-Mastodon experiment seems to have run out of steam, or am I misjudging that? (With the pros and cons that would bring.)
Predocs
My jaws keep dropping as I go through 70 PhD applicant files. People w/ 2 coauthored papers & an interesting solo writing sample don’t even make it to the top 10 in my pile.
The level of knowledge, research experience & passion these kids bring to the table is just remarkable! 🤩
^this tweet sparked a lot of …discussion…
Imo this is a direct consequence of the predoc/ra programs that people do between undergrad and applying to grad school… unsure whether this is a good thing 1/2
Pengpeng Xiao @pengpeng_xiao
Reminder that research potential is extremely hard to measure at the PhD admissions stage, and many great researchers come from outside ‘top’ departments.
@ShengwuLi Assuming Harvard cohort size of 25, only 1 Harvard student will publish in AER after 6 years? Seems low. Am I interpreting that right?
^this is an aside but: I have noted before in this newsletter that the referenced Conley and Onder (2014, JEP) is based on data from 1986-2000, and someone needs to update it. Publishing patterns have changed, norms/expectations have changed, the duration of grad school has increased by 50%, students are more likely to coauthor with their advisors… and that’s all besides the rise of predocs in the last decade
@JosephPolitano @jacob_coblentz This kind of stuff is wildly exaggerated on Twitter. I’ve reviewed applications for a fairly high-ranking program (not MIT but high). Taking PhD sequences as an undergrad and doing well in them is still rare enough that it makes admission very very likely.
The thing we need to be more honest about is that having a credible shot at a top PhD program means that you need to be one of the few dozen best applicants IN THE WORLD. That's not a small thing. The world is a big place, and there are a lot of hungry people out there!
Ashvin Gandhi @ashdgandhi
Marxist viewpoint on new pre-doc equilibrium:
Ask yourself, who really benefits from it, compared to the previous equilibrium without them?
Mainly those hiring them.
(Yes, rational GIVEN equilibrium for those doing them, but that's not the question.)
@IvanWerning It reminds me of this paper I did with Luis Rayo- master extracts all surplus by teaching as s-l-o-w-l-y as possible to keep the apprentice generating output.
@IvanWerning One of the problems is that we tend to judge CVs by output relative to time since PhD. If you can extend the time before that timer starts, then you're usually better off. (I have never heard anyone discount a mature CV because they took a long time to get their PhD.)
Friendly reminder that the alternatives to insanely competitive PhD admissions are requiring postdocs (sciences) or a complete inability to place students (humanities and most social sciences).
The status quo in econ isn't perfect, but it's probably better than most alternatives!
@besttrousers @nominalthoughts Basically one of the only fields in academia where students all get jobs on graduation, where intake is based on that rather than how many cheap lab workers you can get or how deluded you are about demand for 18th century lit scholars. Isn't econ the only one doing things right?
To add to the ~discourse~ having a break from being a student between undergraduate and a PhD is INCREDIBLY valuable. But that is about developing as an adult/human being. Not about pre-docs and publishing. We should value two years off however spent. You'll be a better student.
Since we're in unsolicited PhD advice season, here's mine (with a negotiations prof hat on):
Consider your outside options carefully.
🧵1/4
The big picture on all this stuff is that the time it takes to become a scientist is increasing in all fields (graphs): the “burden of knowledge”. This isn’t just about econ
