Econometrics is the application of statistical rigor to economics that allows economists to test economic theory. It is the backbone of modern economic research; any empirical paper that lacked solid econometric reasoning (and preferably repeatable, data-based analysis) would probably not be taken seriously. While it’s possible to theorize and contribute to economics through the development of new theoretical models (especially by introducing science from related fields, like psychology), most serious economists must be comfortable with basic econometrics. Enter Dr. Wooldridge’s research and his seminal text, Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach, first published in 1999 and now with over 6 editions, still widely used around the world. Dr. Wooldridge is a prolific researcher who has published more than forty articles in top economics journals and has helped advance econometric theory significantly. Chances are, if you’re a serious student of economics, you’ll end up using his material in some of your courses. Dr. Wooldridge’s contributions to advancing econometric rigor Dr. Wooldridge’s main research focus is in microeconometrics, a sub-field of econometrics that works with individual-level data. He specializes in the study of panel and cross-sectional data, researching and promoting the best econometric methods for researchers to use with these types of datasets. This work is important. One of the cornerstones of the scientific method is the use of repeatable experiments that can be measured. Unfortunately, in economics, it’s very difficult to conduct a repeatable experiment. After all, we study the decisions that people make with limited resources, and it would be impossible to dictate people’s lives just to study their outcomes. Therefore, in economics, historical data is used quite often (though randomized controlled trials have become increasingly common, thanks to the work of certain economists). Because of this, economists often do not have control over how the data was collected, or what specific measurements were used to record it. This makes measurement, and statistical testing, a complicated and precarious process for many researchers. For these reasons, it is often misleading or impossible to use the most straightforward methods of statistical analysis when studying economic data. Further, due to the types of analyses economists like to conduct, there are frequently situations where economists must employ models that violate some of the classic linear regression model assumptions. Therefore, it’s important to have pioneers in the econometric space who can devise methods for properly studying atypical datasets, and techniques for accurately conducting statistical tests in these atypical settings. Further, these pioneers must be adept at teaching others to do the same. This empowers other economics researchers to focus on their actual specialties and research questions, while enabling them to produce the most accurate results possible from their work. This is exactly what Dr. Wooldridge has been able to do over the course of his career. His work has been cited over 130,000 times1 because it has helped form the empirical backbone for many other studies. Without someone to break new ground and pioneer a new, useful econometric approach, some types of analyses are just not possible. Dr. Wooldridge’s research has been distilled into actionable findings that other economists can make use of in their research. Its importance cannot be overstated. Dr. Wooldridge’s professional achievements Jeffrey M. Wooldridge is University Distinguished Professor of Economics at Michigan State University, where he has been teaching since 1991. He is a fellow of multiple prestigious societies, including the Econometric Society and the Journal of Econometrics. He is additionally a research fellow at IZA. Besides his most famous work, (Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach), he has also authored another important text for economists, titled Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. Dr. Wooldridge has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Econometrics. He is currently an editor for the Stata Journal. He has also been co-editor of Econometric Theory, an econometrics co-editor of Economics Letters. He previously served as an editor for the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. In addition to more than forty articles published in internationally recognized journals, he has written several book chapters. These include articles in the Handbook of Econometrics and the Handbook of Applied Econometrics. Dr. Wooldridge received his Ph.D. in economics in 1986 from the University of California, San Diego. Notes 1: Dr. Wooldridge’s work has been cited 138,755 times according to Google Scholar as of May 10, 2023. Header image credit: Global Labor Organization https://glabor.org/glo-recommends-take-a-microeconometrics-class-with-professor-jeffrey-m-wooldridge-at-kent-university-deadline-is-end-of-april/. References http://econ.msu.edu/faculty/wooldridge/jmwvita.pdf https://www.iza.org/de/person/4582/jeffrey-m-wooldridge
Students often learn about important figures in economics only briefly and in passing, yet the content taught in economics courses often comes from brilliant economists such as these.
Econometrics, Statistics and Quantitative Methods (JEL C)
A quick guide to math symbols in economics
As such, economists need to have some quantitative skills. The more comfortable they are with math and econometrics, the better for their research and career opportunities. But, economists are not mathematicians. So, when students of economics take Bachelor’s or Master’s courses while studying for their economics degree, they might be presented with symbol-heavy lecture notes. Without understanding these symbols, students will probably struggle to read them, leaving their meaning unclear. This article aims to fill that gap. What are the most commonly used math symbols in economics, and what do they mean? Symbols and definitions Math symbols \(\pm\) - this symbol means “plus or minus”. It’s most often used when describing an interval of some sort, such as a confidence interval. \(\preceq\) - this symbol, and others like it, are used often in economics to describe preference relations. Preferences are the building blocks of the demand curve. This symbol is seldom used outside of microeconomics courses that specifically focus on preferences. \(\propto\) - this symbol means that the variable on the left side is proportional to the variable on the right side. \(\sim\) - this symbol means “similar to”. \(\approx\) - this symbol means “approximately”, which means something is almost, but not quite, equal to something else. \(\parallel\) - parallel. In economics, this is used most often in econometrics when describing how things relate to each other geometrically. \(\perp\) - this means perpendicular or “orthogonal”. Perpendicular means two things intersect at a 90 degree angle in geometry. In econometrics, orthogonal means that one variable has zero power to explain another variable, because they have a covariance equal to zero. \(\in\) - this means “in”, that a variable on the left side is contained within a variable, group, or concept on the right side. It can be reversed to mean the opposite. For example, often in economics, a theory will describe which values of x are possible. If x can only take on real number values, the description might start with x \(\in\) \(\mathbb{R}\). This means that x can only be a real number, because it is “in” the set of \(\mathbb{R}\). \(\otimes\) - this symbol is used to describe the Kronecker product, which is a matrix algebra concept that comes up occasionally in econometrics. \(\partial\) means “partial”, and is used to denote a partial derivative. IN is often used to denote the identity matrix with dimension N; it’s used frequently in statistics and econometrics. \(\cdot\) this symbol is placed above a variable to signify the derivative with respect to time of that variable. This symbol is commonly used in macroeconomics, but seldom outside of that context. Greek letters These are often used to denote variables, but some carry special meaning because of how often they’ve been used in certain contexts. \(\alpha\) - the letter alpha, often used with Cobb-Douglas functions to denote the exponents. Also used when discussing p-values in hypothesis testing; the “alpha” level sets the number that you compare the hypothesis test’s result to, in order to determine if the result is statistically significant (such as 0.05 for 5% significance, which is often the default). \(\beta\) - the letter beta, also used as an exponent in Cobb-Douglas functions. But, it’s most famously used when describing regression formulae. In that context, this letter usually has a subscript and is the shorthand way of saying “the regression coefficient on the variable it’s being multiplied with”. \(\epsilon\) - the letter epsilon. This letter is also commonly used in regression analysis, and usually denotes the error term of the regression. Many introductory econometrics classes, and any other course that showcases regression analysis, will make frequent use of this symbol. Many of the assumptions that allow economists to justify using a regression model involve statements made about the error term. \(\delta\) - the letter delta. This symbol is used often to denote the change in a variable, or depreciation in macroeconomics. It’s often confused with the symbol for partial derivatives, which looks very similar! \(\lambda\) - the letter lambda. It is used most often when solving constrained optimization problems using the Lagrangian method; in this case it stands for the shadow price of the budget constraint. This letter will be seen very often by microeconomics students. \(\mu\) - the letter mu. This letter is used often in statistics and usually denotes the mean, or average, of something. \(\rho\) - the letter rho. Often used to indicate the correlation coefficient between two variables. \(\Sigma\) - the capital letter sigma. Used frequently to denote the sum of things. \(\sigma\) - the lower case sigma. Used often in regression analysis and statistics to denote standard deviation; when squared, it is the variance of the subject in question. \(\Phi\) - the capital letter phi. Usually used to denote a probability distribution in statistics, most commonly the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the normal distribution. \(\phi\) - the lower case phi. Often used to denote the probability distribution function (pdf) of the normal distribution in statistics. But, this letter is frequently used outside of this context too, unlike the capital version described above. \(\chi\) - the letter chi. Used in statistics to denote the chi-squared distribution, which is a probability distribution that is used a lot in regression analysis. \(\Omega\) - the capital letter omega. Used often in econometrics to be the symbol for a matrix. The following letters usually don’t carry special meaning on their own, but are often used in economics regardless. They are commonly used as placeholders for a variable when discussing a theory or equation. \(\gamma\) - the letter gamma. \(\eta\) - the letter eta. \(\kappa\) - the letter kappa. \(\nu\) - the letter nu. \(\tau\) - the letter tau. \(\upsilon\) - the letter upsilon. \(\Psi\) - the capital letter psi. \(\psi\) - the lower case letter psi. \(\omega\) - the lower case letter omega. Other statistics symbols The following symbols are often used in economic statistics contexts. Note that the Greek letters above contain many symbols used in these contexts as well. | means “given that” in a statistics sense, i.e., X | Y = 2 means “X given the fact that Y equals 2”. \(\mathbb{E}\) means “the expectation of”. Typically there is a defined variable, matrix, etc. placed in brackets next to it (for example, X); then, this means the expectation, or expected value, of X. This symbol is used extremely often in statistics. \(\mathbb{V}\) means “the variance of”. It’s used in the same way as the expectation symbol above, so when something is placed in brackets next to this, it means the variance of that variable, matrix, etc. Not to be confused with \(\sigma\)2, which stands for a specific number. \(\sigma\)2 is the symbol for the variance of a variable, matrix, etc. This stands for the actual number that is the variance of something. \(\overline{X}\): the bar above a variable denotes the average. This symbol is used very often in economic formulae, for example when describing the sum of least squares. Set theory symbols Set theory is used to describe how groups of things relate to one another. They’re similar to a Venn diagram, but in the language of math. \(\subset\) - this symbol shows that the variable or group on the left side of it is a subset of (included in) the group on the right side of it. With a slash through it, it means the opposite. \(\subseteq\) - the same as the above symbol, except that the subset it describes can also be equal to the variable or group on the right side. It does not have to be completely contained within the second group. \(\supset\) - this symbol denotes a superset, which is the opposite of a subset. It means that the group on the left side of this symbol contains the group on the right side. \(\cap\) - this is the symbol for the intersection of two sets, or the things they both contain that are the same. \(\cup\) - this is the symbol for the union of two sets, or everything that is contained in at least one of the sets. \(\emptyset\) - this is the “empty set” symbol, which is simply a set that contains nothing. Sets of numbers The following symbols are still technically sets as they describe groups of numbers, like “rational numbers” or “natural numbers”. These are used very often in economic formulae even when other set symbols might not appear. \(\mathbb{N}\) is the symbol for natural numbers. \(\mathbb{Z}\) is the symbol for the set including all integers. \(\mathbb{Q}\) is the symbol for the set of all rational numbers. \(\mathbb{R}\) is the symbol for the set of all real numbers. Other useful symbols \(\exists\) means “there exists at least one”. It’s commonly seen in proofs, which tend to be used in econometrics- or statistics-heavy courses. \(\exists!\) is a variation on the symbol above that means “there exists one and only one”. \(\forall\) means “for all”, usually in the context of stating some truth in an econometric context, i.e., stating that a particular equation is true for all i in some set of observed values N. \(\implies\) means “implies”; the function, formula, or variable on the left side implies some relationship written on the right side. \(\iff\) means “if and only if”. Reading economic formulae Now that the commonly used symbols have been introduced, we can use them to read and interpret an economic formula. The below example is the Goldsmith equation, used in macroeconomics to describe the growth of capital stock over time: \begin{equation*} \dot{K_t} = \mathit{I_t}-\delta\mathit{K_t} = \mathit{s}F(\mathit{K_t},\mathit{A_t},\mathit{L_t}) - \delta\mathit{K_t} \end{equation*} The first variable in this formula stands for the derivative of capital with respect to time, signified by the dot above the Kt. Recall from the list of math symbols above that the dot means the derivative of something with respect to time. This is equivalent to the investment (which here is defined as It) at a point in time minus the depreciation times the capital stock at a point in time. Recall that the symbol \(\delta\) from above is often used to denote depreciation. Then, on the far right-hand side, it is broken down further. It’s multiplied by s, which stands for the savings rate. This is multiplied by a function of capital, labor, and technological growth. The function’s exact form is not defined for us yet, so it’s simply written as F(Kt,At,Lt), which is common practice in math. \begin{equation*} \mathit{YED}_{A} = \frac{\Delta\mathit{q}_{A}}{\Delta\mathit{Y}} = \frac{\frac{\partial{q}_{A}}{\mathit{q}_{A}}}{\frac{\partial{Y}}{Y}} \end{equation*} This equation, meanwhile, describes the income elasticity of demand with respect to good A. It tells us exactly what this elasticity is and how to calculate it. The income elasticity of demand YEDA is equal to the change in the quantity demanded divided by the change in income. \begin{equation*} \mathbb{E}[X] = \mathbb{E}[\mathbb{E}[X|Y]] \end{equation*} This formula is a foundational theorem in econometrics, known as the Law of Iterated Expectations. Recall that the \(\mathbb{E}\) symbol means “expectation”. This formula states the following in mathematical shorthand. Our expectation of X in general is equal to our expectation of the value of X that is expected given some value that the variable Y could take on. In other words, we have some general idea of what X should be over the whole range of possible Y values (which have not been defined yet). This expectation is the same as what we generally expect X to be. In more precise statistical language, this formula means that the expected value of X is equal to the expectation of the conditional expectation of X given Y. It took many words to describe what a simple formula could convey with only a few symbols. Clearly, using these symbols can help economists communicate ideas much more effectively than by just using words! Header Image Credit: geralt on Pixabay (free for use under the Pixabay Content License)
Studying economic theories and methods requires an understanding of mathematical symbols. These symbols are used as shorthand to describe theoretical concepts in economics textbooks, theories, and research papers.
What degree do I need to succeed as an economist?
Generally speaking, there are two career paths one can pursue with an economics degree. Academic economists work for universities and usually combine research with teaching responsibilities. Non-academic economists (sometimes referred to as economists in industry, or “industry economists”) are hired by a variety of employers, including financial institutions, think tanks, NGOs, governments, and more. Some of these economists conduct research much like their academic counterparts, while others have jobs that are far from academia. Industry roles can be further subdivided into public sector (i.e., government) or private sector (i.e., an investment bank) positions. We have previously covered some of the key differences between these two paths beyond what is obvious on the surface. If you’re curious about the difference in the actual work between these different types of economists, check out the linked article. It offers advice written by an economist who has worked in a think tank and later returned to academia for her economics PhD: “Policy or academic economist: which should I become?”. How many years of schooling should I complete to become an economist? As an economist, it’s possible to find an industry job with just a Bachelor’s degree, but these are almost entirely entry-level roles. This can make good sense for a student who recently graduated with a Bachelor’s in economics and wants to work for a few years before pursuing more education. However, a majority of economists have a PhD in economics, and an overwhelming majority have at least a Master’s degree. According to our Salary Survey results in 2022, fully 92% of economists had either a Master’s degree or a PhD (61.3% had PhDs and 30.9% had a Master’s). Only 6.3% of economists who responded had just a Bachelor’s degree. A career as an academic economist often requires a PhD Almost every successful academic economist has a PhD. It would be very difficult to gain academic employment without one, especially since you’d likely be competing with economics PhDs for most positions at universities. According to the Economist, “Nabbing a top academic job in America requires obtaining a PhD, preferably from a good university”1. Full professor of economics positions (which pay very highly) often require not just a PhD, but work experience and research credentials. More junior academic positions may not explicitly require a PhD, but are usually inundated with applications from young economists who have recently completed theirs. It can be difficult to compete without equivalent academic qualifications, or lots of relevant work experience. A Master’s degree at minimum is suggested for a career as an industry economist Even outside of academia, to truly advance in your career as an economist, a Master’s degree or a PhD are very helpful. A Master’s degree in economics should be considered a minimum educational requirement for most economist jobs. As the US Bureau of Labor Statistics states, “Economists typically need at least a master’s degree to enter the occupation”2. This appears to be broadly true across regions, not just in the United States. Many senior economist positions are only open to those who have a PhD. Further, perusing job postings for economists will reveal a whole host of opportunities for economists with a PhD and a specialization in a subfield. This is because for many industry roles, organizations have a very specific need for an economist and the future hire must have relevant experience. For example, NGOs that compete for development projects often do so via a “request for proposal” or RFP process, where the funding government solicits RFP responses and selects the best offer. These competing NGOs therefore often need an economist with a PhD and proven experience in that project’s specific topic area (i.e., a certain region or type of infrastructure) in order to successfully win the contract from a government agency. This is because part of the NGO’s pitch is the quality of economist staff who would be assigned to the project. Becoming an economist without an economics degree Of course, not everyone recognized as a brilliant economist was trained as such. In fact, some of the most famous economists – like John Nash, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994 – studied other fields first. Nash was a mathematician by training. Degrees from other fields can allow someone to shift their career into economics, but this will often limit the economics subdiscipline they can work in. As with John Nash, a successful mathematician can quite certainly become an econometrician or similarly quantitatively-focused economist with their background. Statistics, political science, and finance are other examples of fields that allow one to pivot into an economics career. But, these professionals will have the highest chance of success by working in related subdisciplines – such as policy analysis or financial economics. This, however, is not easy, nor is it a standard method to becoming an economist. If you are interested in economics specifically, it’s better to decide on a specialization and pursue a relevant degree program in economics based on those interests. The value of an economics PhD After reading all of this, the value of an economics PhD might seem important, but difficult to quantify. Not so. Our Salary Survey allows us to estimate the return on a PhD in economics; it turns out that these economists enjoy a much higher average salary than Master’s degree economists. Last year, PhD economists earned 50% more on average than economists with a Master’s degree, globally. Clearly, it’s an investment that pays off. Naturally, this figure varies by region. The graph included below shows the increase in average pay for an economist with a PhD compared to one with only a Master’s degree in each region. Average pay for an economist with a PhD compared to one with a Master’s, by region There are many career options to pursue with a degree in economics. When planning yours, we highly recommend that you search for economics jobs that interest you. Learn their requirements and check the qualifications of professionals who are currently employed in those jobs. Doing this will help you learn what education, skills, and experiences you still need in order to be a competitive candidate for those positions. Then, you can take economics courses, get your next degree, or attend conferences to acquire the skills and experience you need. Whatever your chosen path, you can find resources on INOMICS to help you achieve your goals. We wish you the best of luck on your career journey! References 1. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/08/08/what-it-takes-to-become-an-academic-economist-is-changing 2. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/economists.htm Header image credit: greymatters on Pixabay (free for use under the Pixabay Content License)
It might be unclear to new students of economics how much schooling is necessary to succeed as an economist. For some careers, a Bachelor’s degree is sufficient. In others, a PhD is a near-necessity. This article will discuss how much education successful economists typically have.
The INOMICS Questionnaire: Fratzscher vs. Ditzen
Jan Ditzen is an Assistant Professor (RTD-A) in Econometrics at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, in Bolzano, Italy, where he was previously a postdoc. Since 2021 he is serving as Co-Editor/Digital editor of the economics journal Spatial Economic Analysis, responsible for the Replication Studies Section among other responsibilities. From 2017 to 2020 he was a Research Associate at the Centre for Energy Economics Research and Policy (CEERP) at Heriot-Watt University, where he was internally responsible for assisting BP plc with the BP Energy Outlook, and one of the fuel leads for the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. He obtained a PhD from Heriot-Watt University, a Master in Economics from Hamburg University and a Bachelor in Economics from Mannheim University. Dr. Ditzen’s research interests are in the field of Applied Econometrics with a focus on Panel-Time Series, Cross-Sectional Dependence, Spatial Econometrics, and Growth Empirics. He has also an interest in Simulation Studies and the implementation of econometric methods into statistical software. Marcel Fratzscher: What is your favourite place on earth? Jan Ditzen: Definitely a place out in the hills or mountains. My favourite two would be Grimentz in the Swiss mountains. It is a beautiful place with amazing views and has many good and happy memories. The second one is a remote cabin in the Norwegian mountains. It is a very peaceful and quiet place. MF: Outside of economics, what occupation would you choose if you could be absolutely anything? JD: That's a hard question, there are so many exciting and interesting occupations. An alternative would have been engineering; it must be great to see one’s projects in real life. I usually joke that if I have enough of academia, I plan to become a shepherd in the Alps or a mountain guide. MF: What is the virtue you appreciate the most? JD: Honesty and being straight forward without too many words. MF: Your all-time favourite figure in economics? JD: As an econometrician I (have to) name one as well: Hashem Pesaran. His work on panel data and time series econometrics is unprecedented. Additionally he has some important work on empirical finance and macro models. Beyond that his influence on the profession, for example in the form of his involvement in the International Association for Applied Econometrics, will be lasting. MF: Your #1 economics blog? JD: Surprisingly, I am not following many blogs, but I enjoy reading Daniel L. Millimet's blog "How the (Econometrics) Sausage is Made". Daniel offers easy to read articles on econometrics and related current topics. What I enjoy is that his blog connects well to recent contributions or debates in the literature and outside of it. MF: Your ideal student? JD: A student who asks the "right" questions. The "right" questions are those which make you rethink the material you teach, or even give you ideas for new research. MF: What should be done to address a gender bias in research in economics? JD: I am a fairly junior researcher, so my influence in hiring and strategic decisions is relatively minor. However I think as a profession we need to be more inclusive. In particular we need to motivate female students to pursue PhDs in areas which are male dominated. Too often I end up in conference sessions which consist almost exclusively of male presenters. MF: What is the most misguided research agenda in economics? JD: It is not really a research agenda, but we need to improve on our empirical work. At the end of the day economics is a social science and empirics is the vehicle to validate economic theories. Therefore we have to take it very seriously. From my perspective there are currently two weaknesses. The first one is a technology gap between empirics and econometric theory. Academic papers should try to use the latest econometric methods because those are either solving issues or shortcomings in existing methods, or are a better fit for a specific problem. On the other hand, there are many elegant and beautiful econometric methods which will hardly be used in applied work. The reason for this gap is that many methods don't find their way into statistical software, which manifests a disconnect between the two sides. For econometric theorists, it is often not interesting to follow up on the implementation of their methods into mainstream software. Practitioners often do not cite software or packages, which removes incentives for the original authors of the methods or 3rd parties to invest time into transforming econometric methods into statistical software- from my own experience I know how long developing a well working package takes. This leads to the next weakness: reproducibility of existing studies. The data collection and processing, and production of results are too intransparent in too many papers. If results cannot be validated and reproduced, how can we be sure that their conclusions are sound? Luckily journals have started putting more effort into this. The Journal of Applied Econometrics or the American Economic Association are pioneers, and the Royal Economic Society is currently looking for a data manager. MF: What is the most promising current research field or issue in economics? JD: There is the saying that "Data is the new oil" and we economists know how to handle data and draw conclusions from it. Thus I think there is a lot to learn from the combination of machine learning, big data and economics. There are still a lot of gaps in the theoretical literature and the topics only slowly find their way into more general questions and journals. Using data in the right way can improve the lives of many humans and our planet. Related to this, the use of data itself for a society or economy is also an under-researched topic in economics. MF: Where does economic research have the most influence on policy-making? JD: Certainly monetary economics and central banking. There is also a large influence of development economics and of course competition economics. MF: On what issues should policy listen more to economists? JD: To be honest, this is a hard question. Out of my head, there are a lot of issues from different fields. In general I believe policy should listen more to science. With respect to economics, outcomes in economics can be driven by the author's perception, or even ideology. This can be a problem when it comes to funded research activities, especially done by some research institutes. I think a big issue is that policy makers need to understand better from whom the research comes, and what are the background and limitations of the research. Science is complicated and there is no simple answer. As an econometrician, I would hope for better openness and quality of data. Data can inform in so many ways, but before that, it needs to be collected, processed and analyzed. A slightly German-centric view: There was a recent initiative by German economists for an improvement on data quality and accessibility in Germany which I hope policy makers will follow. MF: What is your career advice to a young economics researcher? JD: Be curious and don't be shy to ask questions, no matter about what or to whom. Follow your own interest and instincts, even if it might not produce the greatest outcome. Finally, don't forget your private life, the persons and activities you love and enjoy.
In the INOMICS interview series, Prof. Dr. Marcel Fratzscher asks economists questions about their field, their opinions on economics, some of their favorite things, and more. Today we took the chance to interview Dr. Jan Ditzen, an econometrician with a robust research presence. The interview, named Fratzscher vs. Ditzen (as is tradition), enlightens us on the contributions of Hashem Pesaran, the beauty of mountain scenery, details about econometrics and why its rigor is important for economics, and more.
Publication behavior in economics – Reputation, visibility, and the gender gap
There exists a body of research that shows how women in economics face more obstacles than men when trying to make their way: Papers are less cited if the corresponding author is female (Maddi & Gingras, 2021). Further, women are confronted with higher standards in publishing compared to men (Hengel, 2022), a more hostile environment (Dupas et al., 2021; Wu, 2018), and they are less well-connected in their discipline, according to the count of women compared to men in the acknowledgments of published papers (Rose & Georg, 2021). Publication differences by gender in economics To further understand the gender gap in the discipline, it is also important to look at publication behavior, acknowledging, of course, that this can only be another puzzle piece in understanding the gap as a whole. This holds especially true for economics, as it is a discipline heavily driven by journal publications and the relative ranking of outlets in which a researcher’s papers appear. In our recent working paper, Justus Haucap, Leon Knoke, and I use the negotiations for large-scale open access agreements between German research institutions and the leading academic publishers to study two unique natural experiments that answer the question: How do changes in the attractiveness of publishers and their journals affect the publication behavior of researchers in economics and adjacent fields? Wiley and Springer Nature closed DEAL agreements that came into practice in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Under the conditions of these contracts, all submissions from authors affiliated with a German research institution are immediately published as open-access without further costs or paperwork for the researchers. In contrast to the former two academic publishers, the negotiations with Elsevier were suspended in the autumn of 2016. As a consequence, 74 institutions canceled their Elsevier journal subscriptions. After a short break, Elsevier decided to continue granting access to institutions without contracts. At the end of 2017, a further 110 institutions terminated their contracts. Again, Elsevier continued to provide access to its outlets. The conflict ended with the German research alliance announcing its withdrawal from the negotiations in July 2018. Elsevier then cut off all institutions without a contract from access to its journals. If you want to access a publication now, you see something similar to the screenshot below that highlights that your institution does not subscribe to the content, and adds a prominent “purchase PDF” button. Results of our study: women react differently than men to open access changes In our working paper, we estimate a difference-in-differences model that looks at the effect of the varying publication incentives on the publication behavior of affected economists. While the two natural experiments (enacting DEAL and the end of negotiations with Elsevier) solely affected Germany, all other countries serve as a reliable control group. We decompose our effects by gender and the presence of co-authors and look at the effect across the quality scale. To do that, we rely on a dataset of scientific publications in economics ranging from 2015 to 2022 that contains some 240,000 observations. For both events, we find significant baseline reactions. While the DEAL caused an increase in publications from authors based in Germany by +4.67%, the cut-off from Elsevier together with the negative press for the publisher reduced publications by -3.91% (both significant at the 5% level). Looking closer at the gender differences, we find for the DEAL a larger effect for women than for men (at least significant at the 10% level) as the upper panel shows. In contrast, the lower panel for the Elsevier cut-off highlights that males do not significantly react (at the 5% level), but females do. Comparing the estimates also shows that they significantly differ for the comparison between male and mixed teams as well as male and female teams. Here, we can already see that different gender compositions affect publication behavior in economics. Further decomposing the mixed-gender group, we are able to identify an almost steadily decreasing pattern in the point estimates for the Elsevier effect. While fully male authorships only show a decrease in Elsevier publications by some 2%, mostly and fully female research groups have an effect size approximately three times the size of their male colleagues, showing that they have reacted to the changes by publishing less in Elsevier. When comparing behavior across the reputation or impact scale – using the Scimago Journal Rank criterion as a measure, we find important differences between men and women. We separate our data into four quartiles. The first quartile includes the journals with the lowest impact, and the fourth quartile, in turn, includes those with the highest. While researchers of both genders drop out of lower-tier Elsevier journals, men actually opt in to those Elsevier journals with the strongest impact, as the panels below show. Based on these findings and further ones presented in our working paper, we conclude that women have a higher interest in the visibility of their research. As such, they contribute to the public good of open science freely accessible to all. In contrast, men seem to value reputation (of the higher-ranked Elsevier journals) more, which is clearly a private good. The implications for gender differences in economics The implications of these behavioral differences are twofold and, especially in academia, potentially severe. First, if the objective is to transform the market for academic publications, the `Elsevier experiment' raises doubts about the extent to which male researchers – who are predominant in most academic disciplines – contribute to this goal. Second, even though we observe a tendency toward open access in the lower ranks of the quality distribution, the behavior at the top appears to perpetuate not only the role of Elsevier, but the position of incumbent journals and publication patterns more generally. Sticking to the status quo bears important advantages: Shifting away from well-off outlets may (negatively) affect the comparative career opportunities of women. In economics, publishing in the highest-ranked journal possible is of high importance. Excluding a publisher that hosts many influential journals may ultimately backfire on an individual’s career. It is even more severe for women who do this as publications have a larger impact on the careers of women than men (Lutter et al, 2022) and because women publish less than men (Xie & Shauman, 1998, Prpic, 2002). To read more about the topic and view additional analysis, see the working paper: Schmal, W. B., Haucap, J., Knoke, L. (2023). "The role of gender and coauthors in academic publication behavior". DICE Discussion Paper No. 397. https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/270608/ References: Dupas, P., A. Sasser Modestino, M. Niederle, J. Wolfers, and T. S. D. Collective (2021). “Gender and the Dynamics of Economics Seminars”. NBER Working Paper 28494. Hengel, E. (2022). “Publishing While Female: are Women Held to Higher Standards? Evidence from Peer Review”. The Economic Journal 132.648, 2951-2991 Lutter, M., I. M. Habicht, and M. Schröder (2022). “Gender differences in the determinants of becoming a professor in Germany. An event history analysis of academic psychologists from 1980 to 2019”. Research Policy 51.6. 104506 Maddi, A. and Y. Gingras (2021). “Gender diversity in research teams and citation impact in Economics and Management”. Journal of Economic Surveys 35.5, 1381–1404 Prpic, K. (2002). “Gender and productivity differentials in science”. Scientometrics 55, 27–58 Rose, M. E. and C.-P. Georg (2021). “What 5,000 acknowledgments tell us about informal collaboration in financial economics”. Research Policy 50.6, 104236 Wu, A. H. (2018). “Gendered language on the economics job market rumors forum”. AEA Papers and Proceedings 108, 175–179 Xie, Y. and K. A. Shauman (1998). “Sex Differences in Research Productivity: New Evidence about an Old Puzzle”. American Sociological Review 63.6, 847-870 Header image picture credit: Viarami on Pixabay.com (free for use under the Pixabay Content License)
In recent times, debates on gender inequality among researchers at universities have emerged, in particular in economics. Even though leading academic societies have addressed these issues already for many years – for example, the American Economic Association has run the “Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession” (CSWEP) since 1971, and the European Economic Association established its “Standing Committee on Women in Economics” (WinE) in 2003 – they appear to be persistent.
The INOMICS Questionnaire: Fratzscher vs. Tol
Dr. Richard S.J. Tol MAE is a Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Sussex, the Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and a Research Fellow of the Tinbergen Institute, CESifo, and the Payne Institute for Public Policy. He is an elected Member of the European Academy. Formerly, he was a Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, the Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Hamburg University, and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He has had visiting appointments at the Canadian Centre for Climate Research, the University of Victoria in British Colombia, at the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment at University College London, and at the Princeton Environmental Institute and the Department of Economics at Princeton University. He received an M.Sc. in econometrics (1992) and a Ph.D. in economics (1997) from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is among the top 100 most-cited climate scholars. He has 299 publications in learned journals (with 100+ co-authors). He specializes in the economics of energy, environment, and climate, and is interested in integrated assessment modeling. He is the editor-in-chief for Energy Economics, a top field journal. He is, to date, the author of the only major English-language textbook on the economics of climate change. He was an author of Working Groups I, II and III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and by extension a member of the winning institution of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Marcel Fratzscher: What is your favourite place on earth? Richard Tol: Wherever the wife and kids are, but I would like them to be in County Clare, Ireland. MF: Outside of economics, what occupation would you choose if you could be absolutely anything? RT: I'd grow fruit. MF: What is the virtue you appreciate the most? RT: Intelligence (it's not a virtue, I know) MF: Your all-time favourite figure in economics? RT: Tom Schelling MF: Your #1 economics blog? RT: What's a blog? MF: Your ideal student? RT: The ideal student is the one who teaches me. MF: What should be done to address gender bias in research in economics? RT: That is a hard one. We're only just beginning to understand the extent of sexism in economics. As a start, we all need to examine our own biases. It would help if some people would retire. Some argue for role models, but I think that poses an unfair burden on the few candidates. It will take a while, but we should remove all that holds women back, from aggression in seminars and harassment at conferences, to delays in review and different treatment in hiring and promotion. MF: What is the most misguided research agenda in economics? RT: I really do not understand macroeconomics. All they seem to do is construct models that have a superficial resemblance to some observations. They seem to have forgotten that John von Neumann could make an elephant wriggle its trunk with five parameters. MF: What is the most promising current research field or issue in economics? RT: I am most impressed with the rapidly expanding availability of historical and pre-historical data. This is not just interesting in its own right, but it also exposes blind spots in our understanding of the institutional and technical context in which economics happens. MF: Where does economic research have the most influence on policy-making? RT: Monetary policy is by and large outsourced to economists. MF: On what issues should policy listen more to economists? RT: Climate policy is at odds with economic research in almost every respect, from target setting to instrument choice. Anne Krueger should have shared Bill Nordhaus' Nobel. Climate policy is first and foremost about snouts at the trough. MF: What is your career advice to a young economics researcher? RT: Be yourself. There are more than enough plastic phonies already.
In this article, INOMICS interviews Dr. Richard S.J. Tol, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when it was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and a researcher at the forefront of economics and climate policy. Dubbed Fratzscher vs. Tol as Prof. Dr. Marcel Fratzscher resumed his role as interviewer, the conversation touches on gender discrimination in economics, the increasing availability of historical data, and how climate policy can clash with economic research.
Agricultural and Environmental Economics (JEL Q)
This article will dive into the economics of the Star Wars galaxy implied by the franchise, mainly from the movies and some of the TV series. As such, fairly mild spoilers abound; beware if you intend to watch some Star Wars movies or shows, but haven’t yet. Money in the Galaxy Far, Far Away In Star Wars, people typically conduct transactions using “credits”, which amount to some futuristic-looking cash. This currency is used almost everywhere in the galaxy, to the point that most citizens only comment on it when certain transactions don’t accept credits. For example, in The Force Awakens, Daisy Ridley’s Rey is paid in food on a bartering basis rather than being paid with money, which tells us how much of a backwater she lives in. Similarly, after an emergency landing on a different backwater planet in The Phantom Menace, Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn is forced to engage in some good old sports betting to muster up needed cash. Other than scenes such as these, which serve to highlight certain dire economic situations, credits are used and talked about by almost everyone. This widespread credit usage immediately raises two major questions. First, how did the galaxy unify its form of currency across planets, cultures and languages, and how is that currency controlled? Second, why are electronic payment methods seemingly unused? We can look to one real-life example of currency consolidation – the European Union – to perhaps answer the first question. Upon induction, member states in the EU must transition to using euros rather than their original sovereign currencies. While this prevents each individual nation from having complete control over their monetary policy, becoming part of the EU trading bloc opens up a host of other opportunities for the country and its citizens. It is entirely possible in Star Wars that the many planets making up the Galactic Republic agreed to create an economic bloc like the EU, giving up their original currencies and adopting galactic credits instead. These are presumably controlled by the galaxy’s central bank on the capital planet Coruscant, where the Senate, with representatives from every planet, governs. Of course, when the Empire took over in Revenge of the Sith, it seemingly just changed the name from galactic to imperial credits and the payment infrastructure probably remained the same. It is also possible, though unlikely, that currencies were consolidated because of financial instability. When a country experiences hyperinflation, one solution to break the doom spiral of runaway inflation is to simply stop using the local currency and adopt a foreign one. This has happened before in our history, for example when Ecuador adopted the US Dollar as its official currency in the year 2000 (this process is known as “full dollarization”). If multiple Star Wars planets underwent “full creditization”, it may have started a gradual process of galactic transition to credit usage for ease of transactions. So, where are all the electronic payments? Electronic payments seem to be very seldom used in Star Wars, and almost never on-screen. One of the few times we know for certain that electronic payments did occur are during Senator Mon Mothma’s scenes in the acclaimed series Andor. In several of her scenes, she must support the nascent Rebellion with electronic transfers without being traced by Imperial intelligence. Despite the rarity of references to electronic transfers on-screen, it’s possible that electronic payments are widespread, and viewers are simply not exposed to them very often due to the nature of the typical Star Wars protagonist. Many of the characters we see are either poor, Jedi, government agents, or people conducting illegal activity. For some, like perhaps Luke Skywalker and his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, electronic payments may be unaffordable or impractical (maybe they can’t afford or don’t need to transfer funds as moisture farmers in the desert). For other characters, like most of the Jedi, payment is often an unnecessary affair; Jedi’s living expenses are presumably sponsored by the government or the Jedi Council. Moreover, Jedi had to renounce all attachments as part of their training, so it’s unlikely that any of them would be seen paying for an elaborate meal or other luxuries. For other characters, electronic payments might even be dangerous. Members of the Rebellion in the Empire era – as well as The Mandalorian’s title character – would probably want to avoid using traceable payment methods so they can avoid being tracked down by their enemies. An example supporting this theory is the aforementioned Mon Mothma scenes in Andor. So, it seems that electronic payment methods do exist in Star Wars. But, much like Germany in our world, for various reasons cash payments continue to thrive. Regardless of the payment method, the galaxy’s economy appears to be quite a hospitable place for conducting business… Corporations in Star Wars Capitalism is an oft-praised, oft-derided economic system that is currently the most common form of economic organization around the world. One of the key complaints that people may have about capitalism is that it can sometimes put profit and the rights of corporations above other things, including the environment. It can lead to seeming excess in certain areas, like inflated executive pay and increasing wealth inequality, as well. In Star Wars, corporations wield immense power in a seemingly capitalist system that features very little regulation. This is shown even at the very start of the saga, in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, where a corporation (the Trade Federation) blockades an entire planet (Naboo) with its own private military force, and even begins to arrest the citizens and send them to labor camps. Meanwhile, this same corporation has a seat in the Galactic Senate on Coruscant, where Trade Federation representatives are apparently treated just the same as any other senator – including the senator from Naboo, the not-yet-Emperor Palpatine. Other corporations have a large impact on the saga as well. The Trade Federation is one of several corporations that form the economic backbone of the separatist movement in the Clone Wars. The Galactic Republic itself, fighting against the separatists in the war, accepted the help of a large corporate enterprise to do so; the Republic’s army of clone soldiers was built at the request of a Jedi Master by Kaminoan cloning services. Although a formal company name is never given in the movies, it’s clear that the Kaminoans are cloners for profit – they produced the units for the Republic and did it for money. But, unlike the separatists, the society on Kamino appears to have no political motives, only profit. Certainly, the activity of corporations on such a scale is something that has become normal to the galactic population. One reason that corporations have probably been able to grow so large and powerful is the lack of trade barriers or serious roadblocks to growing business across the galaxy. This is due to a few factors that will be discussed further below… Trade Barriers in the Galaxy In economic theory, trade barriers increase transaction costs and lower overall economic welfare by lowering economic surplus. So, when transaction costs are lower, ceteris paribus, the economy is much more efficient because comparative advantage is made easier to benefit from. Nations can trade much more freely, which increases everyone’s utility since goods are being made relatively cheaper than they would in the presence of higher transaction costs. So, how do the people of the Star Wars galaxy experience trade barriers and transaction costs? Language & Communication Economies, at their core, consist of people conducting transactions. Common language allows these transactions to grow beyond two people grunting at one another and handing over a few chickens for some beans. Moreover, a lack of common language or the need for translation services increases transaction costs and can inefficiently reduce trade. Therefore, lack of common language is a good example of a naturally-occurring trade barrier. In Star Wars, almost everyone speaks the same language. The few major exceptions to this rule include the well-known Wookiee race, who speak in growls and whimpers (like Chewbacca), some forms of droid (like R2-D2), and a few cultures or species like the Tusken Raiders or the Hutts that seem to have their own entrenched culture. But even in these cases where someone isn’t speaking the common language, either everyone else in civilized society understands them just fine, or translators are able to pick up the slack quite easily (we see C-3PO translating for Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi even though he wasn’t built to be a Hutt translator, for example). This suggests that in Star Wars, language barriers are functionally extinct. This common language across species and planets clearly serves to unify society and massively reduce transaction costs across the galaxy, greatly encouraging prosperity. The lack of conflict we see along ethnic or species lines in Star Wars reinforces the idea that the galaxy has been generally unified through common language and economic activity. Distances & Transportation Transportation cost is another major barrier to trade. It’s difficult to transport goods across long distances and keep them in good enough condition to sell, especially for perishables like food. Historically, trade routes across mountains and deserts are perilous and more rare than routes across easily navigable terrain. And, until the proliferation of better sailing technology, the western and eastern hemispheres were largely cut off from one another. For a galaxy with entire planets separated by the vacuum of space, one would expect transportation costs to be very high. But in Star Wars, travel between planets is easy, fast, and cheap, thanks to hyperdrive technology that even single-person spaceships often have access to. Hyperdrive enables faster-than-light (FTL) travel, which allows ships to travel across the galaxy in a matter of…hours? It’s never made perfectly clear to viewers, though certainly travelers can get to almost any planet in under a day with this technology, with no obvious downside. However, hyperdrive isn’t free - certain spaceships, like the Empire’s TIE fighters, don’t have it. Moreover, the galactic poor are seldom seen leaving their home regions, and local starports like Mos Eisley on Tatooine allow average people to book offworld transportation for a price – which is exactly how Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi meet Han Solo and Chewbacca. If hyperdrive technology were free, Han and Chewie would certainly not be able to charge Luke and Ben a high price for transport. Still, the availability of cheap and widely available FTL technology that can be utilized via small spacecraft has clearly done wonders for the galactic economy. Planets, rather than being separated by millions of years of slow travel or prohibitively expensive technology, can be reached in hours or days at most. Combined with the aforementioned fact that language barriers don’t really exist, transaction costs appear to be very low in Star Wars. The galaxy thus appears to be a beacon of economic productivity. It may come as no surprise, then, that the Empire was able to produce not one, but two moon-sized Death Stars in the span of only a few years. That’s certainly a feat that would require a high level of productivity! The Shadow Economy in Star Wars However, the ease of cheap faster-than-light travel and lack of barriers to communication have clearly allowed criminal elements to flourish in the galaxy. The aforementioned Jabba the Hutt is a member of the Hutt family, who are depicted as cartel-like. But their family isn’t the only criminal enterprise shown. In Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Disney’s The Book of Boba Fett, viewers are introduced to the Pyke Syndicate, who threaten to fill the power vacuum on Tatooine after Jabba’s death (not to mention that Fett tries to launch a criminal empire in the latter series). Several other powerful criminal organizations are seen across Star Wars properties, such as the Crimson Dawn syndicate that features prominently in the movie Solo: A Star Wars story. Bounty hunters also feature often in Star Wars, starting with the motley assortment of hunters hired by Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and recently portrayed by Disney’s popular The Mandalorian. By definition, these bounty hunters operate mostly outside of the law, taking jobs to assassinate, smuggle, escort, hunt, or otherwise accomplish things by force – for a price. Moreover, forced labor and slavery form the backbone of the immoral Empire’s economic machine in some areas. The TV series Andor showcases how the Empire rounded up civilians on trumped-up false charges and kept them in a rotating prison labor system. This is one of the ways that the Empire was seemingly able to churn out the massively expensive Death Star project, as parts for the machine were made in forced labor systems such as these. Not paying for labor (one of the major factors of production) of course lowers the cost of output quite a lot! We don’t have access to reliable measures of the Star Wars galaxy’s total economic output, which may be measurable by GDP as it is in real life. However, it’s likely that just as in our world, the galaxy’s total GDP is probably underreported because of these illegal activities. This is because illegal activities, while they do produce economic value, are not represented in official counts of GDP. In both our world and in Star Wars, illegal products and services create consumer and producer surplus. But, because the good (or service) is illegal, the market occurs in secret and thus the economic value it produces is not reported. These unreported transactions are known as the “shadow economy” in economics, and it is clear that the shadow economy in Star Wars is quite large. Whether legal or not, economic activity around the galaxy is depicted in many ways in Star Wars. Are there other examples we haven’t touched on? What implications do they have for the galactic population? Feel free to introduce your own examples in the comments below! Header image picture credit: gromit15 from Pixabay
Star Wars probably needs no introduction here. One of the largest entertainment properties of all time, it has grown far beyond its (humble?) beginnings on the movie screen. Now, we can learn about “a galaxy far, far away” through books, comics, TV series, video games, and more.
For the first article in the series, in recognition of International Women's Day, we have decided to feature one of the most prominent contemporary female economists, Dr. Esther Duflo. She has become famous among economists for her studies on global poverty alleviation, and she has pioneered the practice of using randomized control trials in development economics. Her studies and experiments have studied health, education, microfinance, and more in the context of global poverty. Dr. Duflo won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 alongside colleagues Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”1, becoming not only the second woman in history, but also the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize in economics. The key word in that explanation is “experimental”. Her approach with using experiments to help us understand global poverty has paved the way for more effective policy design. With these experiments, economists have been able to learn more of what truly works to help alleviate poverty, rather than relying on theory. Indeed, the Nobel Prize’s original press release had this to say about Dr. Duflo and her colleagues: “In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research”2. The difficulty with experiments in economics Economists are similar to scientists in that we attempt to use empirical rigor while learning about the world around us. But, unfortunately, it is often extremely difficult or immoral to conduct experiments about economics. People must have the freedom to live their lives without having their economic situation in life dictated by a curious economist. As an example illustrating why this is difficult, imagine if an economist was interested in the effects of early childhood education (such as preschool) on development, and designed an experiment where certain children were placed in preschool, while others were left at home and did not receive the same educational opportunities. When controlling for other factors, this would help the economist learn about the effectiveness of early childhood education, and could help us design better policies to aid families with accessing the right type of services for their children. But what parent would willingly force a potentially huge disadvantage upon their child (being behind in early learning)? Making an experiment that studied real people and dictated this course of action would be immoral. Thus, experiments in economics are often very difficult to design or conduct, and can be overlooked as it’s often easier to rely on theory. Dr. Esther Duflo’s contributions Despite those typical challenges, Dr. Duflo won her Nobel Prize because she was able to design and implement experiments that teach us more about how poverty works, how people respond to it, and how it can be overcome. She helped pave the way for economists to be bolder with designing field experiments that both aid people and help advance our knowledge, while avoiding moral quandaries; many of these experiments involve providing an economic benefit to a group of people that otherwise wouldn’t have had it. To preserve experimental purity, often the choice of recipient for the intervention is randomly chosen. To aid in systematically conducting such experiments, Dr. Duflo co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (or J-PAL for short) with Dr. Abhijit Banerjee and Dr. Sendhil Mullainathan. The Lab’s purpose is to break down the problem of global poverty into smaller, more manageable pieces that can be studied and used to build policy. It does so by conducting randomized control experiments with the global poor in various developing countries and studying the results, much like a natural scientist might do. An example of a study conducted by J-PAL involved building rainwater cisterns to study how having additional resources reduced individuals’ motivations to conduct political clientelism. The experiment randomly chose communities to receive the cisterns, and studied the effect on the democratic process. You can read more about this particular study at J-PAL’s website. Experiments such as these allow economists to learn how to design more effective policies, in this case, how to avoid future clientelism in a developing economy’s democracy3. Read More from Dr. Esther Duflo Besides contributing to developmental economics with these experiments, Dr. Duflo has also published a number of books and contributed to a number of economics texts. One well-known book, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (published in 2011) is an excellent read for students of economics. It also exemplifies the reason why Dr. Duflo won her Nobel Prize. The book raises questions about the behavior of the global poor, such as: Why do these people make decisions that seem wrong to many of us in developed countries (such as having so many children)? Why don’t they save more? Then, the book explains how these behaviors are often rational from the perspective of someone who is living in poverty and dealing with challenges many of us are unaware of. For instance, children can be viewed as a vehicle for financial security, especially in areas where child mortality is higher and children are expected to care for their parents as they age. In some parts of the world, children – not a 401(k) – are the default retirement plan. This stands in stark contrast to many developed nations, where children are often viewed as a financial burden due to the cost of childcare. The book additionally examines other questions and concepts (such as if nutritional poverty traps exist) that students of microeconomics may be familiar with. It’s an excellent read that we can heartily recommend. Other books Dr. Duflo has written and contributed to include Good Economics for Hard Times, Elsevier’s Handbook of Field Experiments, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and several books in French including two volumes of Lutter contre la pauvrete, Le Développment Humain and La polique de l'autonomie. She has contributed to chapters in books such as the World Bank’s The Influence of Randomized Controlled Trials on Development Economics Research and on Development Policy, Aging and Death Under a Dollar a Day, Field Experiments in Development Economics, and more. Dr. Duflo is currently the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her PhD in economics from MIT in 1999. She has also received a number of other awards, including a "MacArthur Foundation fellowship (2009), the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association (2010), and…the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Development Cooperation”4 in 2009. To read more about Dr. Duflo, you can visit the National Women’s History Museum article about her, or read the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics press release. References 1: Esther Duflo – Facts – 2019. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Tue. 7 Mar 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2019/duflo/facts/> 2: Press release. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Tue. 7 Mar 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2019/press-release/> 3: Harvesting rainfall: Experimental evidence from Cistern deployment in Northeast Brazil: The abdul latif jameel poverty action lab. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). (n.d.). Retrieved March 7, 2023, from https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/harvesting-rainfall-experimental-evidence-cistern-deployment-northeast-brazil 4: Dizikes, P. (2019, October 14). MIT economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee win Nobel prize. MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved March 7, 2023, from https://news.mit.edu/2019/esther-duflo-abhijit-banerjee-win-2019-nobel-prize-economics-1014 Header image attribution: Kris Krüg via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>
In this series of articles, INOMICS will highlight the accomplishments of particular economists who have contributed greatly to the field. Students often learn about the great figures in economics only briefly and in passing, but the content taught in economics courses comes from brilliant economists such as these.
Economic Development, Innovation and Growth (JEL O)
Using data visualization as a learning tool One way of motivating students to engage with economic concepts is to begin by showing a visualization of the data, to stimulate students’ interest. Evidence suggests that these visualizations can increase student learning and engagement and deepen their understanding of economics, particularly at an introductory level. An important aspect of the visualization is that there needs to be a striking feature to draw the student’s attention to an issue, concept, or theory, creating a narrative for students to investigate. A time series graph with spikes or trends in the series can be a useful way of drawing the eye and stimulating interest. The visualization should prompt questions that start the learning process: what is going on? Why is this happening? Data visualization is a powerful tool to raise awareness and interest in many economic concepts, topics and theories. It facilitates the application of economic analysis and therefore aids with the consideration of debates, controversies and alternative schools of thought around those issues. As an example, Figure 1 shows one important macroeconomic indicator: the rate of Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) inflation in the UK. The CPIH is the preferred inflation measure of the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Figure 1: UK rate of CPIH inflation Note: CPIH is CPI plus owner-occupied housing costs and council tax. Source: Based on time series data, ONS (series L55O) In the graph above, student’s attention will probably be drawn to the sharp uptick in inflation from 2021. They should be suitably intrigued and quickly follow up with the question as to why this is happening. Sometimes a chart that shows a contrast between two economic data series can be a powerful tool for illustrating changing relationships. For instance, Figure 2 shows the term structure of interest rates (yield curve) for the United States (US) at two different points in time. Figure 2: US yield curves on 1/4/2021 and 1/4/2022 Source: US Treasury When addressing that first question in the learning process, students should see that at the start of April 2021 the relationship between yield and maturity was positive, while a year later it was very different. The visible difference in the graph can be used to prompt students to consider why the relationship changed. In both cases above, answering why this relationship exists involves developing a conceptual understanding of the economic phenomena observed. For example, after students understand the reasons for the inflation shock shown in Figure 1 or the changing slope of the term structure in Figure 2, formal economic models can be introduced to develop students’ conceptual understanding. The intention is that when confronted with economic data in the future, students can intuitively apply the underlying economic theory. The importance of data analysis The analysis of data is one of three core competencies, alongside the application of findings and the effective communication of knowledge, that is identified by the Government Economic Service (GES) technical framework 2022. This document details the technical standards expected from UK government economists. Components of this core competency include the sourcing, organizing, interpreting and presentation of data, and the application of appropriate statistical and spreadsheet software. Data-based projects that require students to source and analyze their own dataset will help to teach them key employment skills, and align with the practice of authentic assessment. There are important pedagogical benefits from encouraging students to identify and source their own unique evidence to demonstrate their understanding of a particular issue or economic concept. Firstly, working with data can foster student confidence and help them to overcome any data-related anxieties that could be detrimental to their development as economists and interest in the subject. Secondly, data-based projects can enable students to feel that they are discovering things for themselves and constructing their knowledge and understanding as they do so. Consequently, they may develop a potentially unique perspective or research process to bring to discussions on a particular topic. Such active assessment has been found to improve engagement and academic performance. To illustrate the latter, consider CPIH inflation further. We can decompose movements in the CPIH inflation by reference to 12 broad divisions based on the Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP). Students could, for example, look at rates of inflation in particular divisions, such, as transport (Division 7) and housing, water and fuels (Division 4), alongside the overall rate of CPIH inflation. This is illustrated in Figure 3. Students could also analyze inflation rates of classes within the broad divisions. The key is that students are able to take ownership of the task and, through research and enquiry, deepen their understanding. Figure 3: Rates of inflation by specific divisions Notes: CPIH is CPI plus owner-occupied housing costs and council tax; core inflation is CPIH inflation excluding energy, food, alcoholic beverages and tobacco. Source: Based on time series data, ONS (series L55O, L55S and L55V) Conclusion By incorporating data visualization and analysis in our teaching, we provide an authentic learning and assessment experience for students. This will help to further develop the competencies demanded by employers of economics graduates, such as the Government Economic Service in the UK. Further, it will stimulate student interest in the subject – principally students see the relevance of the discipline and its tools of analysis by working with data in an active way. This article was produced in cooperation with the Economics Network, the largest and longest-established academic organisation devoted to improving the teaching and learning of economics in higher education. Learn more about the Economics Network here. Header image picture credit: Pixabay.com
Real-world data in their varied forms are the authentic artifacts through which we observe economic phenomena. Such data can be used in economics courses as part of learning and assessment activities to help students construct economic meaning and develop important employment skills in organizing, interpreting and presenting quantitative data.
Pop Economics: Economics through the lens of pop culture
And those cries for attention seem to be working. We have politicians, policymakers, environmentalists, lawyers, global action groups, local community groups, writers, actors, singers, and talk show hosts talking about the state of the economy. Interestingly, these groups of non-experts seem to understand the economics of daily life better than their accomplished counterparts, or at least they have a knack presenting the ideas more easily. This realization dawned on me when I started my economics PhD on the nexus between debt and the real economy, at which time I had an existing specialization in marketing and only an elementary knowledge of financial concepts. As I read through books, reports and academic papers, I found myself on a perilous expedition with complicated models, charts, techniques and a lexicon that left me baffled. It took me months of annotations, underlining and highlights to make sense of economic text, which continues to date. During this time, I came across multiple pop culture economics references that were closely associated with daily life, more so than tortuous journal papers which often focus on very specific areas of research that aren’t very relatable. It seems impressive how pop culture references integrate the intricacies and complexities of economic concepts and principles into our daily experiences, while economic texts and journal articles feel distant and notional. <11an>limit:3;categories:PhD Programs;disciplines:Economics</11an> So, I got insights into economics’ most debated topics from philosophy, poetry, jazz, rap, satire, movies, podcasts, etc. For starters, consider the statement "Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair" which comes from a former baseball player, Sam Ewing. This humorous quote fits the general sentiment very well during times of inflation. We also have the Beatles singing about the government's tax policies, a topic you least expect to make for a good gig, with the catchphrase, "Let me tell you how it will be, there's one for you, nineteen for me". Meanwhile, the line "the way the taxes are, you might as well marry for love" by Joe E. Lewis is another comical take on the grave issue of high taxation. These statements seem to traverse the boundaries of politics and time, remaining relevant to people and groups throughout the eras. Though pop culture has touched all significant economic areas, two trends that tend to be prevalent are consumer sentiments and widening inequality. Time and again, messages about economics in pop culture has represented the aspirations, problems and expectations of the general populace, and when an economic crisis hits (which is often), it highlights the on-the-ground realities better than the designated indexes compiled by economists to represent sentiments. Famous 18th-century philosopher and composer Jean Jacques Rousseau observed, "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they'll eat the rich", accurately representing the kind of animosity behind growing populism and cynicism towards the elite class. A similar point was put forward in the 1970s by Gil Scott-Heron in his song “Whitey on the moon” , where he blatantly points out the partisan policies of the US government. He writes, "I can't pay no doctor bills, But whitey's on the moon. Ten years from now, I'll be payin' still, While whitey's on the moon.” Similarly, in his satirical take on the government's policies, comedian Will Rogers comments "The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn't know that money trickled up." We also have prose and poems commenting on the economy and offering suggestions. The 1980s rock band Dire Straits provided an accurate description of the state of affairs when they sang, "these are class symptoms of a monetary squeeze…sociologists invent words that mean industrial disease". Then we have the 2008 song “Circulate” by Jeezy. "Sound like the country's going broke. The industry's going up in smoke…Please (please), Please (please) Let the dollar circulate", a seemingly workable solution to the liquidity crisis faced by the countries then. In the drama realm, we have popular movies such as Modern Times, Mother India, The Wizard of Oz, Robin Hood, and more recently, The Pursuit of Happyness, Sorry to Bother You, Parasite, Inception, Born Equal, Nightcrawler, High Rise, and Squid Game. There are also dystopian movies like The Hunger Games, The Age of Stupid, and Atlas Shrugged which explain the dynamics of the economy, though they are not a part of the typical wall street genre. So, while you are going over your economic textbooks and journal articles again and again, it might be nice to take a step back and reflect on how these topics affect the average person. And, while you’re at it, you might as well play some good records. Header image picture credit: Pexels via Pixabay.com
So, the economy is in crisis. Well, when is it not? The global economy is becoming like that one histrionic person that is always miserable, in shambles and crying for attention.
If you have your own insights about the #EconMeToo movement and would like to write a blog post about it, we invite you to contact us at submissions@inomics.com. Discrimination in Economics Not only are women outnumbered and underpaid in economics, they also face a disproportionate amount of harassment and discrimination within the field. These issues are unfortunately very common; an AEA survey found that 48% of female economists reported they had experienced discrimination based on their sex, compared to just 3% of male respondents. Some of these other forms of discrimination include not being invited to speak at panels as often as men, and receiving extra scrutiny during presentations relative to their male peers. Harassment in Economics A recent movement, dubbed #EconMeToo on Twitter, has drawn renewed attention to the sexual harassment, assault, and other abuses faced primarily by women in economics. This recent movement began when a professor of economics at an American university spoke out publicly against specific economists. They did so after allegedly being in conversation with a number of female economists who complained about sexual harassment and even assault. These public accusations have been controversial, but the accusers have alleged that very little was accomplished through official channels, and they had no other choice but to escalate. Part of the lingering frustration that has led to this movement is that even despite prior efforts to combat sexual harassment, there are a lack of meaningful consequences for perpetrators in certain spaces in economics. For example, in 2019, the AEA implemented a policy that allows economists to file complaints about sexual misconduct from others, particularly at conferences. Conferences are a realm where university policies often do not help prevent misconduct or punish perpetrators, because attendees are usually from different universities. However, since the AEA is a professional organization and does not have authority over economists’ actual jobs or employers, its policies have little power to enforce consequences. Unsurprisingly, those who have complained through the AEA policy have expressed that problems have persisted due to the lack of consequences for perpetrators. It is unclear how the recent resurgence in attention on gender inequality in economics will affect the field. We hope the environment improves, though time will tell. If you have an opinion about discrimination or harassment in economics, and the issues outlined above, then join the discussion in the comments below. We also invite well-written articles or research summaries that deal with these topics. If you have an insight or case study that you would like to share, we invite you to contact us at submissions@inomics.com. Header Image Credit: Viarami on Pixabay (free for use under the Pixabay Content License)
We have previously written about the gender pay gap and the leaky pipeline in economics. This article highlights other gender-related issues within the field, particularly around gender-based harassment and discrimination in economics.
The Post-Pandemic Recovery of the Economics Job Market
However, our 2022 Salary Report delivered some good news: the job market for economists appears to have recovered significantly since the beginning of the pandemic. In this article, we will analyze the Salary Report’s findings and show how economist jobs appear to have recovered across the world. In the INOMICS Salary Report, we collected and analyzed survey data about economists’ careers worldwide. You can download the full report and examine the economics gender gap information in detail by downloading the Report. Economist employment levels and pay increasing after 2021 The Salary Report showed that fewer economists were unemployed during 2022 than in 2021. This is especially true for economists with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, according to our survey data: Just 2.2% of PhD economists were unemployed during the 2022 survey period, compared with 6.6% in the 2021 period. 4.4% of economists whose highest degree attained is a Master’s degree were unemployed in the 2022 survey period. For the 2021 period, this figure was 11.6%. About 21.7% of economists whose highest degree attained is a Bachelor’s degree were unemployed during the 2022 survey period compared to 51.4% in the 2021 survey period. The above figures clearly show that while PhD economists’ employment was least affected by the pandemic, even PhD economists have enjoyed a 4.4 percentage point reduction in unemployment since 2021 (i.e., from 6.6% down to 2.2% for a total reduction in unemployment of 4.4 percentage points). Meanwhile, Master’s degree economist unemployment decreased by 5.2 percentage points and Bachelor’s unemployment decreased by 29.7 percentage points. Moreover, earnings rose for economists in this period compared to earlier years. While PhD economist earnings rose 7.0% over the 2022 survey period, average Master’s earnings rose 26.3%, and average Bachelor’s earnings rose 32.1%. Taken as a whole, this data suggests that the job market for less-educated economists, which was more negatively affected by the pandemic, has been recovering. Meanwhile, the job market for PhD economists has been experiencing moderate growth since the depths of the pandemic. Re-examining economist jobs in the Global South Again, our data from 2021 showed that economists in the Global South were more negatively affected by the pandemic than others. How have economist jobs in these regions been recovering? Economist unemployment in select regions The above data from our survey show that the trend of reduced unemployment since the height of the pandemic is realized in the Global South, too. There are two important things to note about this data taken from our Salary Report: first, these statistics combine economists of all backgrounds and levels of experience. Second, countries that are often considered part of the Global North were removed from the calculations that generated these statistics. Specifically, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Russia, Israel, South Africa, South Korea, the Hong Kong SAR region of China, and Singapore were removed when creating this graph. As a comparison, the following chart tracks the same data for the remaining regions in our salary data: Change in economist unemployment in Europe and North America When comparing these regions to the regions in the Global South, it appears that unemployment for economists was similarly reduced across the entire world. Every region experienced a reduction in unemployment, and every region’s “economist unemployment” rate was cut by more than half in 2022 compared to 2021. This lends further weight to the idea that the global pandemic was indeed a major factor causing higher unemployment for economists in 2021, since it was a global, indiscriminate phenomenon. Remote work appears to be sticking in most regions Beyond the apparent recovery of jobs and pay for economists, the distribution of work (whether in-person or remote) has shifted for most since before the pandemic. The majority have seen increases in remote work, and most of the remainder saw no change. Only 11.6% of economists reported working more on-site. These results are remarkably robust, as most economists across employment categories and different types of employer report similar results. Figure 29: How has the amount of remote work in your workplace changed since the pandemic? The largest deviation comes from those employed at central banks, which have seen a larger increase in remote work. Just over 76% of economists at central banks reported more remote work since before the pandemic, compared to about 56% of economists overall. Regionally, increases in returns to the office seem to be concentrated in South Asia and Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It’s plausible that less reliable or widespread digital infrastructure could encourage economists to work in an office more frequently. It may also be less common for employees to have their own home office space in these regions. However, the increase in remote work in some regions has a downside. Among our survey respondents, a significant number of academic economists (though still a minority of academic economists overall) complained about the increase of remote work in their jobs. The downsides, as expressed by these economists, mainly consist of reduced contact with colleagues and students. In an academic setting, interpersonal interaction can be important. It can increase learning for students and effective collaboration among colleagues for teaching and research purposes. Several economists have lamented that increased remote work has hurt these typical benefits of working in an academic setting by reducing the amount of contact people would normally have. For more data on the state of economics in 2022 and since the COVID-19 pandemic, see the 2022 Salary Report. Do these survey results reflect your work experience since the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you working more remotely, for better or worse, as well? Feel free to share your own experiences in the comments below!
The outbreak of COVID-19 created a worldwide recession, and many people experienced reduced work hours or unemployment because of it. Economists were not immune from this. In early 2021, INOMICS reported that one third of economists (especially those in the Global South) faced negative impacts on their careers due to the pandemic. Most affected were economists working in the private sector, though economists in the academic sector faced other issues.
How To Pick A Topic For Your Economics Research Project Or Master's Thesis
<a class="button" href="https://inomics.com/search?program=master-program&economics=agriculturalenvironmentaleconomics,businesseconomics,econometricsstatisticsquantitative,economicdevelopmentgrowth,economichistory,economicsystems,economicthoughtmethodology,financialeconomics,generaleconomics,healtheducationwelfareeconomics,industrialorganization,internationaleconomics,labordemographiceconomics,laweconomics,macroeconomicsmonetary,microeconomics,othereconomics,publiceconomicspolicy,urbanruraltransportationeconomics">Browse our course listings for economics Master's degrees 1. Make sure it's something you're interested in This sounds obvious, but you should make sure that the project you choose is of interest to you. If you're going to be working on a project for months or even longer, then it has to be something which you are engaged with. The best way to keep engaged is to pose a question for your project to which you want to know the answer. Think back over the lectures you've attended and the books you've read, and consider what issues you enjoyed discussing and thinking about. If there was ever a topic which you came across and enjoyed studying, but didn't have the time or resources to investigate more, this is your chance to dive deep and become an expert. 2. Get inspired by previous students' projects If you're unsure where to start, or don't know what sort of project would be appropriate for your course, it's a great idea to look at previous students' projects. In most universities you'll be able to access previous student theses in the library, so you should take advantage of this resource. While you should never copy someone else's idea, you can use it as inspiration. For example, perhaps someone has done a project on the economic implications of an international policy within a certain country. Your project could look at the implications of that same policy in a different country. Or you could look at a similar policy in a different period of history. Additionally, many alumni will still have links with your university, so it may be possible to get in contact with them directly. If someone has written about a topic you are interested in, do not hesitate to request a meet up to pick their brains. Most academics relish the opportunity to discuss their own research, so there is no reason to be shy. In any case, it is always fascinating meeting those more experienced than yourself who have remained in the field. 3. Ask your lecturers or supervisor for advice Once you have one or more ideas about thesis topics, you'll want to ask for advice from people who have experience in assessing projects. You don't want to do a lot of work on a project idea, only to hear much later that your supervisor thinks your topic is not a good choice. Do some basic preparation before meeting with a supervisor or lecturer. Make sure you understand the basic facts of the topic area in which you're interested, and that you have some ideas about what your research question will be and what methods you'll use to study it. Further, make sure that you get feedback on your idea early in the process. This advice extends to the rest of the research project too. It is your supervisor's job to guide you, so keep in regular contact with them throughout the course of your research. 4. Pick something original, but not too obscure It’s common to struggle to come up with new economics research topic ideas, but you don't want to do the same project which has been done by a million students before. Not only will this be uninteresting to you, but it will be uninteresting to the person marking your thesis. Try to come up with a novel approach or a new topic to study. Perhaps there is a new type of data analysis you could use to study an old problem from a new angle. Perhaps new data has been made available, and an older study could be challenged or reaffirmed by studying the new data. However, be wary of anything too obscure – you don't want to be stuck with no materials or resources to work from. To reiterate the above, definitely run your more ambitious topic ideas by your supervisor to help avoid the pitfall of going too niche and really falling down the rabbit hole. <11an>limit:3;categories:Master's Programs;disciplines:Economics</11an> 5. Choose a small and specific topic One general tip when coming up with a project or research question is to think smaller. If you don't know a lot about a topic, you won't yet appreciate all the subtleties and complexities it contains. You might think that you can produce a great project on the impact of the introduction of the Euro in Ireland, for example, but this topic is way too broad to cover in a Master's project. Choosing a topic that is far too broad like the above example is a common mistake that new students make when they are unfamiliar with academic research. Get more specific, and your project will not only be more manageable, but you will actually get to the crux of something. It may seem counterintuitive, or scary - it can seem impossible to write 50 or more pages about an obscure question. But, it’s much better for your final evaluation to maintain a small scope and conduct very high-quality research about that small topic, rather than attempt to explain a large phenomenon alone and fill up an entire paper with surface-level analysis. 6. Consider an interdisciplinary topic If you're thinking of economics Master's thesis ideas but find yourself interested in another academic subject, you may have the opportunity to learn about that field as a part of your research project. You could consider a project which touches on a subject like history, sociology, business, politics, or psychology, for example. The advantage of this is that you can try out learning information and methods from another field to see if studying it further would interest you. It will also help you to create a unique and memorable project, as most of your fellow students will likely study a topic which is based purely in economics. However, this might also make your project a little harder, as you will have more new information to grasp than others – but it can also be very rewarding for ambitious and engaged students. If you wish to take this route, strongly consider finding a secondary supervisor within the interdisciplinary field who can guide you along with your more economics-focused supervisor. This can even be beneficial for your career, as you become well-versed in a niche set of skills that employers or PhD programs would find attractive. 7. Check for available data If you’re doing an empirical project, the success or failure of your thesis may very well come down to data availability. It’s very important to have an idea of what data to use for your study before you commit to a topic. If you have the world’s greatest research idea, but the data to study it just isn’t available, you’re out of luck. To avoid this heartbreaking situation, search for usable data as early in the process as possible. This search can even help you narrow down your topic area of focus, and pick a specific, small-scope research question within your field of interest. Perhaps you’re interested in the effect of malaria prevention programs on children’s economic outcomes in the future, but panel studies haven’t yet been completed in your region of interest. If you search for data, you might find a completed panel dataset that studied a similar disease, or one that studied malaria in a different country. These types of searches can help you pick a related, doable, and properly-scoped research question without wasting time racing towards a dead end. 8. Meticulously plan your experiment Of course, if you’re running an experiment, you can create your own dataset. This situation presents its own, equally important challenges. A poorly designed experiment can render your data biased or unusable even after months of work. To avoid this type of catastrophe, spend as much time as you can designing the experiment, checking over all your assumptions meticulously, and seeking feedback and approval from your supervisor to ensure that the experiment is designed well. Studying examples of experimental designs that led to published studies in prominent journals is highly recommended. Modeling your experiment on successful ones in the past is a great way to ensure your experiment runs smoothly. Header Image Credit: Ilena93 via Shutterstock (licensed image - copyright)
One of the biggest and most exciting challenges of a young academic's career is coming up with that first economics research topic. Knowing how much is riding on the decision, it can also be pretty stressful. With so much to consider, we thought it would be easier to break the decision-making process down into some key points. Consideration of each will give you the best chance possible to make sure the topic of your economics Master's thesis is the right one - both for you personally and for your future career. Without further ado, read on for our advice on how to pick a topic for your economics thesis.
When consumer demand for a good follows the expected price behavior, we call it a normal good. Normal goods include most items and services that are sold. They have an income elasticity of demand greater than zero. We further subdivide normal goods into two categories; normal necessity goods that have an income elasticity between 0 and 1, and luxury goods, which have an income elasticity greater than 1. Most types of normal goods have a price elasticity of demand that is negative, because people usually demand less of a normal good as its price rises. Examples of normal necessity goods include commonly purchased items like food, everyday clothing, etc., as well as many entertainment and leisure items like concert tickets. If people’s income falls, then they will buy less of these goods. And, if the prices of these goods rise, people will buy less of them. Luxury goods are slightly different. Like a normal necessity good, when a consumer’s income rises, they will typically purchase more of a given luxury item (income elasticity is positive). But when income rises, the proportion of income consumers spend on luxury goods increases more rapidly than for necessity goods. Likewise, when consumer’s income falls, luxury goods are often the first items to be cut out of the budget. Thus, luxury goods are more sensitive to changes in income than necessity goods. Reflecting this, the income elasticity of luxury goods is greater than 1 – they are highly elastic. Luxury goods are typically very expensive, high-end items that may signal a certain social status to others, or give pride to the owner. Rolex watches, high-end sports cars, and Louis Vuitton handbags are all examples of luxury goods. They are not necessary to have, but are highly desirable, which leads to their very elastic demand. Further reading For more on normal, normal necessity, and luxury goods as they relate to the income elasticity of demand, see the article on that topic. As opposed to normal necessity and luxury goods, inferior and Giffen goods exhibit decreasing consumer demand as consumers’ incomes rise. However, Giffen goods, similar to luxury goods, experience increasing relative consumer demand as prices rise. For more on inferior and Giffen goods, see the linked article. Good to Know Another potential difference between luxury and necessity goods is that demand for some luxury goods respond uniquely to price changes. This subtype of luxury good is known as a Veblen good. When the price of a Veblen good falls, consumers may actually buy less of it. When the price rises, consumers may buy more of the Veblen good, ceteris paribus. This is because the high price of these items is a signal of high quality and exclusiveness that is important to consumers. Thus, lowering the price can make the item feel less appealing, even if the product hasn’t changed. Conversely, raising the price can make the item feel more exclusive and special for consumers who can afford it. The high price also serves to prevent many average consumers from affording the item, which lends to Veblen goods’ exclusive appeal.
The laws of supply and demand are basic economic theories that are often among the first things new students of economics learn. The law of demand states that, ceteris paribus, consumers choose to buy less of a good when its price rises (possibly by buying available substitutes), and more of the good when its price falls (price elasticity). Alternatively, consumers will usually buy more of a good when their income increases and, by extension, less of a good when their income decreases (income elasticity).
An inferior good is an item that consumers buy less of as their income rises; they have a negative income elasticity of demand. These goods are usually of cheaper, lower quality than comparable items that a consumer might want to buy, but can’t afford. For most inferior goods, though, price elasticity of demand behaves similarly to normal goods; when the price increases, consumers buy less of these goods. Thus, inferior goods do not violate the basic law of demand. Examples of inferior goods include cheap but unhealthy food items like instant noodles. Imagine that a consumer really likes noodles, but has a tight budget. Because of this, they eat instant noodles fairly often. As usual for most goods, when the price of instant noodles rises, the consumer will be able to afford less of them. But, when this consumer’s income rises, the consumer may be able to afford a trip to a ramen restaurant or a purchase of hand-made noodles instead of buying more instant noodles. This brings them an increase in utility, since they only eat instant noodles when they cannot afford a better noodle experience. Thus, instant noodles are an inferior good for this consumer. Although it does bring them some utility, other experiences are more preferable. As soon as the consumer has the means to get a better experience, they will demand less of the inferior one. This is just one example; most inferior goods follow this pattern, but not all. Giffen goods are one subtype of inferior goods that behave differently. They are named after Scottish statistician Sir Robert Giffen, who is credited with first describing them. Consumers buy less of Giffen goods as their income rises, as usual for inferior goods. The difference is that consumers will buy more of a Giffen good (proportionally to their income) as its price rises. Therefore, Giffen goods exhibit a negative income elasticity of demand – like inferior goods – but a positive price elasticity of demand, like certain luxury goods (specifically Veblen goods). Giffen goods are usually staple food products that people rely on to survive, like rice and wheat. This confusing behavior is best illustrated by an example. Consider a poor laborer in a low-income region whose diet mainly consists of rice. When the price of rice rises, the laborer has little choice but to spend more of their income buying it, because they need the same amount of rice to survive regardless of the price. Thus, their consumption of rice increases as a proportion of their total income. Meanwhile, their consumption of other goods falls, as they have less cash left to buy non-essentials. But, when the laborer’s income rises - perhaps from a pay raise - they have an increased budget and can afford other things. The portion of their income spent on rice falls (like a regular inferior good). They may buy less rice in absolute terms too, perhaps if some of the new goods they can afford include more nutritional types of food. Further reading For more on inferior goods as they relate to the income elasticity of demand, see the article on that topic. To compare inferior and Giffen goods to normal goods and luxury goods, see the linked article. Most goods in the real world fall into one of these four categories – normal, inferior, luxury, or Giffen goods – so it’s helpful to be familiar with each of them. Good to Know Inferior and Giffen goods tend to be purchased more frequently by low-income consumers who have little choice given their budget. In general, goods are more likely to be a Giffen good when there is a lack of close substitute goods in the market. Normally, if a good’s price increases (for example, butter), consumers can substitute away from that good into something similar but cheaper (like margarine). Lack of a close substitute, or lack of income, may mean that consumers can’t do this. Instead, they are forced to either give up on the utility that the good would have provided, or pay more for it and reduce their consumption of other goods.
Usually, consumers will buy more of an item when it becomes cheaper or when their income increases. This basic fact of economics stems from the laws of supply and demand. When demand for a good follows this typical price and income behavior, we refer to it as a normal good. But not every good follows this intuitive behavior.
So, it’s no surprise that there are many films that can be thought of as economics movies. Some of them might not even be explicitly movies about economics, but nevertheless discuss themes that some economists study, like strategic behavior. As a follow-up to our popular article 10 Movies All Economists Will Love, we’ve collected 10 more movies that will surely give the economist in your life something to talk about. Next time you sit down for a movie night, be sure to give the following options a try! INOMICS is a member of the Amazon Associates affiliate program and the Apple affiliate program. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn money through any qualifying purchases made after you click through. However, this is not a sponsored post. 1. Up in the Air Up in the Air follows a corporate downsizer and motivational speaker (named Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney) who specializes in helping companies lay off their employees. Although Ryan does this, he wants to do so in a sensitive way, and is against a new remote termination program that the company decides to implement. The movie explores some difficult emotions that may resonate with our own careers, and challenges the philosophies of life that several characters have. For those who enjoy a more personal movie that explores the human side of the economy and ends on a hopeful note, this is a good choice. 2. The Hunger Games The Hunger Games is a popular book and movie series from the mid-2010s that follows the story of a group of teens as they fight for survival. But under its surface the movie has surprising economic depth. The entire concept of the titular Games is something of a commentary on capitalism shown by the staggering system of wealth inequality between the glitzy Capitol and each of the Districts (which specialize in producing specific goods). Moreover, the characters attempt to secure sponsors before the Games begin to improve their chances of surviving, and their actions during the Games showcase the strategic decision-making that Game Theory teaches – and how concepts like honor and altruism can break theory’s expectations. This movie is a fun choice to touch on economics concepts in a thrilling, action-filled way. 3. Equity Described as a financial thriller, Equity follows an investment banker trying to work her way up the corporate ladder. Unfortunately, she gets tangled up in a web of corruption as an old friend investigates the shady practices of a company whose IPO she is tasked with promoting. She must find the truth of the matter to save her career. This movie makes a great choice for economists who love both drama and finance in equal measure. 4. High Flying Bird A sports-focused movie, High Flying Bird is a fictional story that nevertheless seems inspired by the real-life 2011 NBA lockout. It follows a sports agent, Ray Burke, whose company is at risk of bankruptcy following failed negotiations that led to the lockout. Ray must pitch an intriguing new business plan to his star rookie talent – including streaming games on social media platforms – that might help them both keep their jobs. Among many themes, the movie touches on the principal/agent problem, which is a known phenomenon in game theory. Moreover, besides delving into the business behind the game, the movie also features interviews with real NBA players about their own rookie years. This one’s sure to please any fan of economics and sports. 5. Boiler Room Boiler Room is a drama similar to the more recent The Wolf of Wall Street that shows how pump-and-dump stock market schemes work and how they ruin the people caught up in them – except those running the scheme. The movie follows a college dropout named Seth who is hired at one of these firms, targeted by the FBI to become their informant, and who tries to right some of his wrongs in the process of taking the company down. 6. Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room Enron’s bankruptcy and fraud is a famous true story. This dramatic documentary explores the doomed venture and how they cooked the books, abused the stock market, and more to stay afloat for as long as possible before eventually collapsing. It’s an especially good watch for economic historians and those interested in policy. 7. The Wizard of Lies Amidst the 2008 financial crisis, Bernie Madoff was arrested for running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. The news story made waves when it became public knowledge, and showed how fraudulent activity can ruin well-intentioned, average people victimized by financial crimes like this one. This movie is a documentary set in the aftermath of Madoff’s arrest, and flashes back frequently to show how Bernie’s business lies affected his family members, too. For a drama that explores one of the most famous financial crimes in history, give this movie a go. 8. Dune: Part One (2021) A well-known sci-fi movie based on a book, Dune: Part One is another film that is undergirded by economic themes throughout. Amidst a backdrop of political intrigue, House Atreides is given charge of a planet producing the most valuable substance in the galaxy – spice that is necessary for space travel. But the House that formerly controlled the spice trade doesn’t take the Atreides’ ascension lightly, and the ensuing conflict leaves the fate of the planet and many of the characters uncertain. For a movie where politics and the flow of valuable resources are crucial to the plot, look no further. 9. The Lorax Based on a book of the same name written by Dr. Seuss, The Lorax shows the story of a town with an environmental problem. All of the trees were cut down to produce garments, and this history has been hidden from the town until a young boy goes on a journey to find a real tree. This is a family-friendly movie option that touches on themes of sustainable development, tragedy of the commons, and resource exploitation. 10. The Corporation The Corporation is a 2003 documentary film that concentrates on the history of corporations and the behavior of the modern corporate entity. It analyzes and criticizes this behavior, especially with regard to how corporations’ rights are perceived as similar to humans’ in the legal system. Although clearly not an unbiased film, the movie was praised for avoiding overly partisan rhetoric and received positive reviews. It’s worth watching for those who wish to think critically about one of the main vehicles our economies use to conduct business. Still hungering for more top movies in economics? Do you have a favorite option that we’re missing? Share your favorite choices in the comments below! Whatever your movie choice, we wish you a happy viewing.
Economics touches every aspect of our lives, whether we know it or not. Game theory, statistics and econometrics, politics, government policy, and of course finance are all aspects of economics that affect our daily lives.
The Glass Ceiling and the “Leaky Pipeline” in Economics
In the INOMICS Salary Report, we collected and analyzed survey data about economists’ careers worldwide. You can download the full report and examine the economics gender gap information in detail by downloading the Report. One key feature of gender inequality in the workplace is that equally-skilled women may be passed over for career advancements (like promotions) in favor of men. The term “glass ceiling” is a metaphor for this artificial barrier that impedes women in the workforce. This effect has been well-documented in many industries, and may explain some of the gender pay gap. Quantifying the Glass Ceiling in Economics In order to examine the following figures fairly, we must take into account the overall number of women in economics. IDEAS/RePEc estimates that 26.2% of economists are women; meanwhile, 28% of our survey respondents were women. For more information on the gender ratio in economics, see The Gender Ratio in Economics in 2022. Proportion of Women in Academic Roles in Economics In academia, women make up larger relative proportions of people in less prestigious positions. There are more women than men in Postdoc, Research Assistant and Student Assistant roles relative to their sample sizes in our data. There are a roughly representative number of women in the PhD Candidate, Associate Professor and Lecturer/Assistant Professor roles. However, proportionally fewer women than men are full Professors of Economics. Proportion of Women in Industry Roles in Economics Industry roles exhibit a similar but more pronounced pattern. Although women make up only 27% of our sample, they account for a large proportion of entry or lower-level roles, particularly traineeships and internships. Meanwhile, the amount of women who are researchers/analysts or middle managers is slightly below what would be expected if there was no gender inequality. Finally, the number of women in executive positions is a mere 7%, far below what would be expected with equality. Research by French economist Dr. Emmanuelle Auriol and colleagues reaches a similar conclusion. Dr. Auriol and her team found that women account for 32% of all economics positions and that women’s representation falls as seniority increases. They find that women make up about 40% of entry-level positions but only 27% of senior positions. They additionally found that the disparity is greater in the US than in Europe. What is the “Leaky Pipeline”? The above discussion has highlighted a phenomenon of women disappearing towards the upper ranks of economics. This phenomenon has been dubbed the leaky pipeline. It partially explains why there are fewer women in more senior positions; more women than men drop out of the field, or stop getting promoted, as their career progresses. It’s not perfectly clear why this occurs, but it is likely due to a combination of gender-based discrimination, lack of support networks, and other hindrances (such as unequal pay) within the field of economics, which are explored below. Moreover, in certain regions childcare expectations, cultural pressure, or lack of parental leave may prevent women from advancing in their careers after having children. It’s possible that more women than men choose to work part-time after starting a family (whether due to personal choices, these cultural expectations, lack of affordable childcare, etc.). Further, within economics itself, women may face barriers entirely unrelated to their personal situation. An IMF article reveals some of these additional discriminatory factors. They include a look at stereotype-promoting comments on referee reports, the fact that women are more highly underrepresented in macroeconomics, finance and international economics, and the childbirth penalty to earnings that women face across their entire careers. Their article corroborates earlier findings in this article as well, and includes more data that is worth reading. The European Student Think Tank, drawing from other research, describes the state of women in STEM fields this way: “...the majority of Master’s students in science are women, but they tend to leave the sector at higher rates than their male counterparts (Thornton 2019). This may be explained by a gender pay gap and the lack of women in senior positions in the digital sector (European Commission 2019), which could discourage younger women from pursuing a career in STEM.” Moving forward: how to address gender inequality in economics? One of the best ways to address any problem is to recognize it and make it known. Therefore, we invite all of our readers to study your professional surroundings. Examine if there are ways in which your university, economics department, workplace, etc. discriminates against women in economics. Engage in conversation about the issues. Check if there is equal pay in your workplace, and advocate for it if not. Be an ally – do not doubt reports of sexual harassment or other forms of discrimination, and take them seriously. Together, we can build a more egalitarian field where all economists are equally valued.
The 2022 INOMICS Salary Report allowed us to examine the field of economics across employer types, job positions, and regions. This article continues with our look at gender (in)equality in economics by examining the glass ceiling. Below, we examine this effect in academia (economists employed by universities) and industry (other employer types).
In the INOMICS Salary Report, we collected and analyzed survey data about economists’ careers worldwide. You can download the full report and examine the economics gender gap information in detail by downloading the Report. The Gender Ratio in Economics Compared to STEM fields Historically, economics has been a male-dominated field. IDEAS/RePEc estimates that 26.2% of economists are women. Meanwhile, 28% of our survey respondents were women. This is worth comparing to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, which are notorious for being historically underrepresented by women: In the UK, according to UCAS data from 2022, 35% of STEM students in higher education are women. Computer science and engineering have the lowest proportions: in both fields only 19% of students are women. In mathematics and physical sciences, this percentage is in the 35-40% range. In our survey data, 29.7% of economists in the UK were women. According to the Pew Research Center in 2021, in the US women make up half (50%) of workers in STEM fields. However, this varies wildly by discipline; women made up 74% of workers in health-related jobs, but only 25% in computer-related jobs and 15% in engineering jobs. Among our survey respondents from the US, 32% are women. In the EU, 34% of STEM graduates were women in 2022. Out of the 27 EU countries, 22 have more male scientists than female. Eurostat data from 2021 shows that 41% of scientists and engineers in the EU are women, up from 32% in 2008. Our survey suggests there are fewer female economists in the EU: 31.3% of economists who responded to our survey from the EU were women. According to UNESCO Bangkok in 2020, in East Asia women made up 23.4% of research positions in STEM, while in South and West Asia women made up only 18.5% of these. The Brookings Institute reports (based on UNESCO data) that in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022 women made up 18-31% of science researchers. In our survey data of economists, 16.1% of respondents from Africa are women. According to a UNESCO interview in 2020, women made up 36% of STEM researchers in Latin America. In our survey data, 23.2% of economist respondents in Latin America were women. Economics thus appears to have a comparable amount of women as STEM fields on average, though slightly more than engineering and computer science and likely somewhat less than mathematics and physical sciences. It is possible that women choose to become economists at lower rates than men simply due to diverging interests. However, when examining the gender ratio in light of other research, this explanation appears unlikely to be true. A Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) article found that economics scores lower than other STEM fields across gender diversity metrics. Their article only considers university employment; it corroborates our findings that there are proportionally fewer women in more senior positions at universities. The Women in Economics Index publishes reports that track gender inequality in economics, as well. Their most recent report from 2020 corroborates many of our findings, and features additional insight on the lack of female economists in leadership positions in the field. Further Reading Our Blog includes further information on the gender disparity in economics. The 2022 INOMICS Salary Report data allowed us to examine gender differences in economics such as the glass ceiling and leaky pipeline as well as the gender pay gap. Both phenomena suggest that women may be choosing fields other than economics due to unequal treatment rather than a lack of interest. How should we work towards a more representative field of economics? A recent post on INOMICS discusses the ways that one economics department is aiming to increase diversity (in both gender and racial equality) in their program, with some early success. These types of initiatives can highlight the issues and the need for change while working towards that change. At INOMICS, we value contributions from economists of all genders equally. We look forward to a future where the same can be said of our entire field.
In late 2022, the field of economics came under additional scrutiny for its unequal treatment of women. This article will examine the relative share of women in the field of economics, complementing the analysis of our survey data in the INOMICS Salary Report. This is helpful context for other discussions of gender discrimination in economics, as many statistics can be better understood after learning about the distribution of men and women in economics.
Two quick notes before diving in – first, 99.8% of our 1,316 survey respondents identified as either male or female, so we will only consider these two genders in this article. Second, the numbers in this article have been adjusted with 2021 purchasing power parity data taken from the OECD, so some numbers in this article may not match their counterparts in the full Report. In the INOMICS Salary Report, we collected and analyzed survey data about economists’ careers worldwide. You can download the full report and examine the economics gender gap information in detail by downloading the Report. Overall Economics Pay Gap According to our survey data, male economists are paid 23.1% more than female economists on average. This broad figure is a worldwide average for economists at a wide variety of career stages and levels of education. How does the gender wage gap vary when we take a closer look? Gender Pay Gap by Highest Degree Held For PhD economists, men earn 20.4% more than women. For economists with a Master’s degree, this figure is 20.8%. Average Economist Wage by Gender and Degree Gender Pay Gap by Employer The gender pay gap varies substantially by the type of employer. Research institutions feature average pay that is higher for female economists on average. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule. Most employers exhibit a pay gap in favor of men. The worst offenders are private companies, governments, and universities, which show gaps of more than 20% each. Private businesses have the largest pay gap by gender, at almost 35% in favor of men. Wage Gap by Employer Type All of the preceding figures are worldwide averages. How does the pay gap change when examining specific regions? Average Regional Economist Wages by Gender and Degree The above graph shows a clear trend in most regions. Male economists with PhDs are paid the most, followed by female economists with PhDs, male economists with Master’s degrees, and female economists with Master’s degrees. Economists whose highest degree held is a Bachelor’s are not shown. There are some visible exceptions to the general trend that men are paid more. In two regions – the Caribbean, South & Central America and East Asia & Australasia – average pay for PhDs appears to be roughly at parity, though gender pay gaps still exist at the Master’s level. Moreover, in Africa and South Asia, average pay for women appears higher than for men on average. Our findings suggest that there are fewer women economists in these regions (as we had many more male respondents than female respondents in them), but that they tend to do quite well if they are among the few women to pursue the field in their region. Other Research A Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) article found, like our survey, that the gender pay gap is worse in North America than in Europe. Figure 27 in the INOMICS Salary Report (below) shows that the gender pay gap is worse in both percentage and absolute terms in North America than in Western Europe & Scandinavia. Average Economist Pay by Gender in Select Regions Meanwhile, a 2019 IZA paper found that among academic economists in the UK, the gender pay gap was prevalent and that its size was persistent. The paper also found that men were more likely to have higher-paid, more prestigious positions (this was accounted for when examining the pay gap). They also found that women were 11 percentage points less likely than men to be promoted to full professor, which is in line with our survey data in 2022. Concluding thoughts The INOMICS Salary Report 2022 devotes several pages to examining the gender gap in economics in detail; download the Report for free and turn to the Gender Pay Gap in Economics section for more. We at INOMICS believe that every economist, regardless of gender or background, should be treated equally. Clearly, new action must be taken to eliminate the pay gap in economics. This will help the field to utilize its human capital to the fullest, and to ensure fair treatment for all who contribute to it.
That gaps exist in economists’ pay and career attainment due to gender discrimination is not news. This article will discuss the findings of the 2022 INOMICS Salary Report as they relate to the gender pay gap in economics. Unless stated otherwise, the facts and figures in this article are taken from our 2022 survey data. INOMICS has previously published reports on the gender pay gap, but this is our deepest dive into the topic yet.
How to Recruit Economics Students Over Christmas
Because many department budgets are cut off at the end of the year, there is also additional pressure to spend all of your allotted funds while maintaining value for money. When you consider that eight in ten people are influenced by web content before making a purchase over the holiday season, it's clear that keeping up your marketing in December is vital. What lessons can we learn from adopting festive marketing approaches in other fields to recruiting economics students - be it for full study programs or online courses or professional training for those about to leap into the job market? To help you in your quest for increased engagement, here we explore the tips, tactics and strategies to help increase your presence over the holidays. Move Your Promotion Forward Don’t hold off advertising your program, course, scholarship, or whatever opportunity you want to promote. If you are not visible online, how do you expect people to find you? With students starting earlier and earlier each year to find their next step, posting during the holidays is vital. Especially as the winter break often gives people enough time and mental energy to research future opportunities. TIP: Sign up for our Customer Newsletter and get sent our exclusive December Offer with significant discounts on a post on INOMICS. Create engaging Christmas content Without a doubt, by creating engaging, inspiring and valuable content aimed at a specific target audience, you stand to increase student engagement exponentially. Through researching current seasonal trends, exploring your data, developing student personas and developing content ideas in a collaborative environment, you’ll create the kind of festive content that will drive students to your university’s website and offerings. Creating informational blog posts, infographics, or whitepapers and humorous, inspirational or nostalgic video content (and sharing it at optimum times during the holiday season) will help spark the interest of potential students and increase your levels of Christmas engagement. Here are some Christmas content ideas for your inspiration: The modern student’s 2023 survival guide. A glimpse behind the scenes of various departments within your university. A year in review: the highlights of your university throughout the year. A festive wish video featuring current content and faculty including a ‘join the family’ call to action. Host an event At this point in the game, it may be too late to host a physical event, but you could create a webinar and schedule it to take place between Christmas and New Year. Think about what your prospective students might be interested in or want to know, conduct extensive research, and develop a theme that you feel will drive engagement. You could incentivize people to join the webinar and ask live questions through social media by offering festive prizes for attendance and referrals and create a supporting blog post to help promote the event. Launch a Competition A swift, simple and effective means of expanding your reach, boosting institutional awareness, and driving masses of engagement, a fully-fledged festive competition is a powerful promotional force. By running a competition, you will grab the attention of your prospective students, build a buzz and encourage virality. But, to gain maximum traction and engagement, you should encourage all potential entrants to answer a question, join a conversation, or share a piece of themed content. In doing so, you’ll be able to expand your reach organically, encouraging people to follow the competition from start to finish and in turn, increasing the likelihood of your competition content being shared amongst wider audiences. Students love an incentive, especially around Christmas - and by offering one in a fun, entertaining and actionable way, you stand an excellent chance of growing your audience. We hope these student engagement tips will help you to connect with a valuable new audience over the holiday season. This article is based on a guest post for INOMICS by Dan Hughes on "How to Increase Student Engagement to Your University Over Christmas", first published in December 2019. The INOMICS Team updated the article in December 2022 to include fresh information such that the current text differs significantly from the original. However, we still want to credit Dan for authoring parts of this article.
While there is a slight slowdown in the immediate period surrounding Christmas and New Year, December is still prime recruitment season and it would be a mistake to wind down your campaigns too early