1. Understand what type of PhD you want Perhaps surprisingly, there are different ways to acquire a PhD, and some of them are very likely to appeal to you more than others. There are American-style PhD programs and European-style PhD programs, each of which can suit different applicants better than others; further, there are research assistant positions that can lead into PhDs, Master’s programs that can lead to PhDs, and even Master’s programs that are considered part of a larger PhD program. For more detail about these different avenues, be sure to check out our article on the Master of Research (MRes) and our article on American vs. European-style PhD programs. Once you’ve got a good idea of which type of program interests you, next comes the difficult task of identifying the specific institutions you’re interested in. But the first step to doing this is often looking inward, first. 2. Think about your research interests and location preferences You are unique and have your own interests and skills, which unfortunately means that there’s no easy and quick way to discover which economics departments are the most interesting or best fit for you. While there are many places where you can begin your search, it really helps to have an understanding of what you want first. Your research interests are probably the single most important factor determining which economics departments will be a good fit for you. Even if you don’t have any strong research interests (yet!), you still very likely have general areas of economics that interest you more than others. If macroeconomics courses always excited you, you should naturally look for universities with a strong focus on macroeconomic research, and avoid programs with more of a microeconomics focus. If identifying your own interests seems daunting or overly prescriptive, here’s a great way to start narrowing it down: think about the research papers you’ve been exposed to before. If you’ve read any research papers that intrigued you, look up their authors and the institutions where those authors were (or are) employed. Chances are, those universities have a good economics department that conducts research in areas you find interesting, with several potential supervisors for your future work. Many programs will require you to write a research proposal, or at least a personal essay about research topic(s) that you would like to pursue. If you’re still unsure where exactly your interests lie, preparing these materials will help you solidify your feelings about what areas of research you would be most inclined towards. It’s worth noting that many PhD programs understand and accept that you may change your mind about your exact research topic once you start your PhD, and that’s okay. A notable exception to this are some European-style PhD programs that may require you to begin your research immediately; these are typically about 3 years long and you generally need to have a supervisor before being admitted to the program. In any case, in order to acquire a PhD, you will have to conduct research on a specific topic. Figuring out what interests you now is an excellent first step to help you succeed, so that you can ensure you’re studying in a department that can support you and your interests. 3. Find economics PhD programs and make a list of suitable ones After you’ve identified your research interests, you need to make a good list of economics PhD programs that you want to apply to. You ought to apply to four or five institutions minimum (but probably not more than ten). Start building your list with the programs you may have already found or heard about, but cast your net wider than this. Several resources can help you here. Organizations like RePEc and Times Higher Ed maintain ranked lists of economics departments, which can help you identify programs that you ought to look into. Don’t place too much emphasis on ranking alone, however. There are very many economics departments with excellent staff that will prepare you very well for your career as an economist. All else equal, aim for institutions that have consistently high rankings, but it’s more important to ensure that your interests align with those of the department, and that the institution is in a location you would enjoy (or at least not dislike) living in for several years. If you’d be willing to relocate, consider economics departments in other regions or even on other continents that would be suited to your interests. It may well be that a university far from you has the perfect program, and you’ll never know if you don’t look! INOMICS PhD Program Listings can help you get started here, as our program listings include universities around the world. This search process can be as thorough as you need. If you come into the process with a good idea of what institutions you are interested in, consider looking for similar institutions in other regions as a backup plan. If you have no idea where to start, you can avoid boiling the ocean by asking yourself which criteria are most important to you, and start by looking at institutions with those criteria — for example, economics departments that have at least one professor conducting research into microfinance, if that is one of your core interests. Or, perhaps you can filter by region, and begin your search in a specific country or region that you want to study in. 4. Narrowing your list At first, it might turn out to be easy to find dozens of programs at quality institutions that you might enjoy, but then it may be hard to narrow them down. If you’re struggling to differentiate the programs, you may need to do more research. We suggest trying to answer the following questions: What are the research interests of that economics department and its faculty? Are those topics exciting, and can you think of research you’d like to conduct that could build off of those areas? What papers in the last five years have the department’s faculty published? Do any of these interest you? Are there TA or RA opportunities that you could pursue at that university? What do the job placements of recent graduates from that program look like? Are new PhDs from that institution getting jobs that you’d want to have? Does the economics department have any specialized research groups? Does the economics department collaborate with other institutions? How competitive is your application compared to others for that institution? This may not be easy to answer, but sometimes economics departments post the average test scores and/or GPAs of their incoming class, which you can use to compare. Where is the institution located, and do you think you’d enjoy living there? A PhD is a lengthy process, and if you dislike big cities but are only applying to the Paris School of Economics, the London School of Economics, and Columbia University in New York City, perhaps you ought to de-emphasize these and look for campus-based universities, or options in smaller towns or cities. And, all else equal, take both the overall university and the economics department’s rank into consideration. 5. Dive into specific application requirements Once you have a list of places to apply, the most important thing you can do to succeed is stay organized. Keep a spreadsheet or an easy-to-navigate word document where you can keep your notes. These notes should include things like your impressions of an institution, what stage of the application process you’re in, and why you’re interested in that program. Of course, some institutions may have application requirements that are difficult or onerous for you to complete — for instance, most economics departments in the US require at least three academic letters of recommendation, which can be difficult to acquire. Some institutions — particularly some located in northern European countries like Denmark and Sweden — may require you to apply to specific job openings rather than a more general PhD program entry. Many programs require test scores (usually the GRE), while some are waiving those entirely. In cases where the application requirements are difficult or even impossible for you to complete, it pays to know in advance so that you can spend your search time looking at other institutions. Further, there are often minor variations in the type or format of application materials that various institutions want you to submit. Sometimes, universities require that you contact a potential supervisor before applying; you must know this and attempt to do so well in advance of the application deadline. And, whether or not you need to write a personal statement or answer more specific essay questions can vary by institution. These are all examples of things you should keep track of in your notes. Keep it Structured and Start Applying! All of these together will lead you into compiling a pretty comprehensive overview of the institutions you want to apply to. This overview will help you recall the details you found during your search, and also make it easier to extend your search if you need to. Once you’ve begun the application process, use your notes to keep track of the latest correspondence you’ve had with each institution, and any lingering to-dos you may have with them. This will help reduce the stress you feel throughout the process, and when you’re accepted to a program you’re excited about, you can celebrate. We wish you all the best of luck with your search and your applications! Image Credit: James Wheeler / Pexels Free Licence (via Canva Premium)
Economists often need PhDs to reach their career goals. According to INOMICS’ Salary Report data — and as Figure 3 in our PhD pay premium article shows — the vast majority of professional economists earn a PhD at some point in their careers. Academic economists are expected to acquire one in order to do research, while a PhD can often be a prerequisite for high-level industry economist jobs. But no matter how experienced, all PhD economists, at one point, were mere students searching for a good place to study. While important, how to search for the right place to study is seldom discussed…and there are thousands of universities with great economics departments out there. Feeling overwhelmed, and curious for some tips for your own search? Read on!
Economic Development, Innovation and Growth (JEL O)
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics (JEL E)
Agricultural and Environmental Economics (JEL Q)
Public Economics & Economic Policy (JEL H)
Urban, Rural and Transportation Economics (JEL R)
Econometrics, Statistics and Quantitative Methods (JEL C)
What my Finance Internship Taught me about Economics
1. Finance is a rich area of research…and the industry can be artificially complex Finance is not primarily concerned with the stock market, although that’s what most people immediately think of. TIAA-CREF stands for “Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America-College Retirement Equities Fund”. It’s a massive firm that began when US entrepreneur Andrew Carnegie decided to create a not-for-profit pension service for academic professors in 1918. He later created a board of governors to allow educators themselves to help run the non-profit. Even within this one single firm, I was blown away by the sheer amount of different things that existed. Products and services across this huge firm were varied and sometimes had little to do with each other. TIAA has dozens upon dozens of financial products: annuities, IRAs, HSAs, guaranteed and variable lifetime income vehicles, and more. I could scarcely wrap my head around them all…but that’s, I suspect, a natural result of how the finance industry has evolved. For example, if finance was easy to navigate, anyone would be able to plan and execute a sufficient retirement plan for themselves. Choosing the right investment vehicles or the right mix of assets would be straightforward. There are other benefits that firms like TIAA could end up serving — for instance, the ability to pool money with other investors to create larger funds — but overall, from a microeconomics perspective, the finance industry is heavily disincentivized from making finance easy to understand to laypeople. That may be partly because it would cost the finance industry, or society in general, money to broadly educate the public, and partly because some firms’ services benefit from general lack of knowledge about finance. Financial advisors are a great example of this: they’re a useful and thriving service in part because many people don’t have the knowledge (or time to acquire said knowledge) that would let them invest or pursue their financial goals effectively on their own. This isn’t necessarily malicious. After all, medical doctors are hardly incentivized to educate patients about injuries or diseases that they’re not currently facing, just as financial advisors are likely to provide advice about a specific financial need to specific clients, and not attempt to fill in all of the gaps in their understanding. (Keep in mind that many financial advisors exist to help wealthy clients manage their fortunes, too, which is a useful service that falls outside the bounds of this analogy). Still, the dark side of this complexity can be seen in the fallout of the 2008-2009 market crisis, which was made worse by banks packaging subprime mortgages (and other assets of questionable value) into new, nearly-inscrutable investments and selling them off. Overvaluation of these assets — which didn’t properly take into account the risks of default, or how rising interest rates and falling home prices could lead to it — led to a devastating butterfly effect that crashed the global economy. And this is just one example of one type of financial asset, mainly sold by commercial banks involved in real estate. There are many, many different banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, accounting and tax firms, credit card and payment processing companies, real estate companies, and more, along with plenty of sub-categories for each of these. Each of these organizations might package and sell dozens of products with difficult-to-parse names: CDs, HSAs, ETFs, annuities, commodities, etc. In short, the finance industry is massive. This means that the movement of money throughout the economy can be very complex, too. The interplay between all of these different firms and the markets they participate in, not to mention foreign markets (and the foreign exchange market itself), determine how much money is available in M1 and M2, affect interest rates, can signal the onset of a recession or recovery, and much more. By working alongside the TIAA executives during my internship, I got a very interesting glimpse into how keeping all of this complexity straight was difficult — even for them! In fact, the entire premise of their strategy retreat suggested that… 2. Human capital is critical, even in “quantitative” industries It might be easy to picture a financial firm as a cut-throat, number-crunching entity that doesn’t need any help allocating its resources. Simply get the most money possible from every interaction, and mercilessly cut off any projects that fall below some (at times arbitrary) level of ROI. Yet the entire point of my internship was to help executives strategize about their portfolios, and also give them tools — via a management consulting skills framework — to think strategically in the future as well. It’s not easy to determine what the best course of action is, even for finance executives! And finance is one of the most quantitative industries that exists; finding the optimal course of action is likely even harder in industries that don’t have the ability to measure performance as “easily” or “objectively”. How should an art gallery, nail salon, museum, or fast fashion company decide what product mix to offer, or when a new initiative isn’t worth continuing? The answer usually boils down to the following: people with a lot of experience in the industry make an informed, but not all-knowing, decision. In other words, human capital is extremely important for organizations, something that firms have known for a long time. Salaries are higher for more experienced employees, after all, reflecting this (among other factors) — and it’s much easier to get a job in an industry where you already have experience compared to one you’ve never worked in before. Human capital is the key ingredient that allows companies to parse through uncertain data and find the best course of action. It’s also where innovation comes from — which is the driving force behind creative destruction, and arguably economic growth itself. My finance internship showed me that even in a deeply quantitative organization, human capital was still a key component of success, and was seen as worth investing in. It also challenged many core assumptions of the more basic economic models I’d learned in class — clearly, perfect information was not something the firm had. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily invalidate those models — many of them have specific uses that make them still perfectly valid to teach and utilize. 3. Within firms, it’s not all about the money TIAA is a not-for-profit and was built around the idea of helping professors invest for retirement. As such, it doesn’t have quite the same environment as a for-profit finance entity might. However, my internship still showed me — quite clearly — the value of what economists call a “warm glow”, which is a feeling that comes when you feel good about the work that you’re doing. The TIAA “retreat” I interned with began with a clear reminder to the executives that their company was not for profit, and aimed to serve people and help them reach their financial goals. Framing the business in this way clearly resonated with the executives, and gave them that “warm glow” feeling. The company’s appeal to their core values and the fact that the executives’ work ultimately helps people reinforced the idea that their work was important and meaningful, and helped the executives to feel proud of their role and excited to strategize. I’ve witnessed plenty of for-profit companies using similar tactics as well, such as healthcare companies sharing stories of heroic hospital workers or patients who received care within their facilities. These appeals can increase employee productivity, and in many cases probably firm loyalty as well. In recent decades, there’s been an increasing focus on “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). Firms are increasingly expected to use some of their profits to help improve society around them, and are simultaneously expected to reduce their negative impacts on the environment as much as possible. Certifications have popped up in the past several decades to help consumers find particularly responsible companies, including the “B Corp” designation. This “corporate responsibility” is another important aspect for firms to consider that can be hard to quantify, but can absolutely affect the bottom line. Some for-profit firms are even founded with an explicit mission to make the world a better place in some measurable way — like Patagonia, which aims to have a positive environmental impact (“Protect our home planet” being one of the core values listed on their website). In some countries there are even novel legal corporate forms, for example since 2005 “Community Interest Companies” (CICs) in the UK, or “gemeinnutzliche” (literally “publically beneficial”) limited companies ( gGmbH) since 2013 in Germany. Beyond the firm’s perspective, workers themselves are often increasingly searching for jobs that can give them a sense of purpose, or a “warm glow” from the course of their regular job. Deloitte’s “2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey” found that “Roughly nine in 10 Gen Zs (89%) and millennials (92%) consider a sense of purpose to be important to their job satisfaction”. When searching for a new job, many potential employees nowadays need a bit more motivation than just earning a salary. This conflicts with the general premise of a cold, hard, economic look at an industry — firms dedicated only to optimizing profits, and employees dedicated only to optimizing their output and thus paychecks — though it doesn’t necessarily disprove it. It’s clear to see how firms could enjoy a boost from a good reputation garnered through CSR initiatives, for one. And, applying an economics perspective, a student might consider how utility-maximizing workers might flock to companies with a strong “warm glow”-giving purpose, because that sense of purpose may increase their personal utility more than a few extra thousand dollars of salary would. Whether or not your internship is within the finance industry or in another sector, the experience is highly likely to teach you valuable things about the real world that you can take into your studies, and consider again through an economic lens. After all, economics is an amazing field with plenty of theory about the economy and how it works — but it can help to get some real, on-the-ground experience too. If you’re considering an internship, be sure to check out INOMICS’ internship listings; we wish you the best of luck in your search. 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Towards the end of my undergraduate degree, I had the chance to work with upper-level managers on a strategy retreat as part of a summer finance internship. The internship was at TIAA-CREF (now known as just TIAA), and the retreat intended to help the firm strategize about the direction they should take in several aspects of the company. As a Bachelor’s student specializing in consulting, it was my responsibility to help them make use of a management consulting framework and mindset while doing it. This experience was my first foray into the finance industry. As I’ve progressed in my own studies, it’s given me plenty to reflect on as I’ve encountered various economic theories of the firm. Read on for the top three things I learned about economics from my finance internship!
How to be an Effective Peer Reviewer in Economics
Initial considerations before accepting a peer-review assignment Before accepting a peer-review assignment, consider whether you are a good match to review the submitted manuscript. Do you know the journal and the kinds of articles it usually publishes? Are you familiar with the literature and methods of the paper? Can you complete the review by the assigned deadline, or do you need to request additional time? It's also essential to disclose any potential conflicts of interest, such as personal or professional relationships with the author, that could impact your objectivity. If you must decline the invitation, it is always helpful to suggest colleagues who would be a better fit. Evaluating the paper: Key aspects Your job as a reviewer is to provide a clear and decisive recommendation to the editor. To do this, start by evaluating whether the paper aligns with the journal’s aims and scope. Assess the paper’s contribution and whether it is sufficiently important to merit publication in that particular outlet. Since journal standards vary widely, it’s essential to understand the guidelines of the one you're reviewing for. Next, examine the content of the paper itself. Does it have a clear conceptual framework and development of hypotheses? Gauge whether the data is described in enough depth and if the empirical specification is appropriate, current, and well-grounded in prior literature. Are there additional robustness checks that should be done to make the analysis more convincing? You should also determine whether the writing requires substantive revision to improve clarity and coherence. Editors often suggest professional proofreaders to help refine language and style, and you may want to suggest that option too. Be specific Recommending a “revise and resubmit” implicitly conveys to the editor that the paper makes a meaningful contribution, but it is not publishable in its current form. However, with successful revisions, it may be acceptable for publication. In this regard, your comments should provide the authors with a well-defined path for meeting that standard. If you suspect the paper's results are incorrect, then you should provide specific, objective reasons for your concerns instead of communicating general skepticism. Vague comments are less helpful for the author and will leave them guessing on how to address your feedback. For example, instead of simply noting that the paper has a problem with censored data, it would be more constructive to suggest trying a Tobit model. For more complex issues, offering additional references or methods can help guide the author towards a solution. Focus on the main goal: Improve the paper Your criticisms should always be constructive, even when recommending rejection. In such cases, it is a good idea to highlight one or two strengths of the manuscript and offer a few sincere suggestions for how the authors can overcome the paper’s shortcomings. It is not your job as a reviewer to tear the paper apart or impress the editor with your own knowledge. Your goal is to put forth a genuine effort to help the authors improve their paper. Think carefully about whether your comments will strengthen the analysis, or merely “make work” for the authors. Recognize and avoid bias In economics, double-blind peer review is common, but it is often easy for reviewers to identify authors by searching for an unpublished draft online. You should avoid doing this, as knowledge of the authors' identities, particularly their institutional affiliation, seniority, or nationality, can introduce implicit bias into your evaluation. Research suggests that female authors are held to a higher standard, and that papers written by women may undergo a longer review process (Lundberg and Stearns, 2019). In the event that you have an idea about who the author might be, being conscious of such potential biases can help ensure a fair process for all. Be the reviewer you wish to encounter Being kind and professional are essential aspects of the review process. Research in economics requires a significant amount of time and effort, with some working many years on a single paper. Being unnecessarily harsh serves no greater purpose but many people behave this way because it reflects their own experiences as an author. Remember that all papers have weaknesses and limitations, but your role as a reviewer is to help the authors strengthen their work and, in doing so, contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field. References Lundberg, S., & Stearns, J. (2019). Women in economics: Stalled progress. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(1), 3-22. Image Credits: Wendolin Jacober / Pexels / Getty Images
Publishing journal articles in economics can be slow and challenging, and effective peer review plays a critical role in shaping the efficiency and fairness of the process. Despite its importance, many researchers receive little guidance on how to be a constructive peer reviewer. In this article, I provide advice on how to approach peer review thoughtfully and professionally, with the goal of improving the experience for both authors and reviewers.
The Path to Tenure - In Discussion with Victoria Vanasco
CN: You received tenure in 2023 at CREI, having worked there for around five years previously as a Junior Researcher. When did you decide that a tenured position was a career goal? VV: Most research positions are of the tenure-track form, but this is not a promise of tenure, and typically if you do not get tenure by a given date you have to leave. For most people working in Academia, tenure is a career goal, as without it we have to leave the institution where we are (and sometimes the city or country), when our tenure is denied. Ideally, you get tenure at a place you like. I was lucky to get tenure at a place I REALLY like. The question was then ¨when to go up for tenure¨, and when professional activities started demanding a lot of my time (referee reports, participation in scientific committees, conference organization, seminar invitations, etc), I felt it was time. "Fate was involved in the decision, as I did not get some jobs I would have found very attractive." Victoria Vanasco CN: You grew up in Argentina, before looking abroad to continue your academic journey. Was this a tough step to make? VV: It was hard to decide whether I wanted to pursue the PhD abroad vs look for a good job locally. Fate was involved in the decision, as I did not get some jobs I would have found very attractive. I decided to take it step by step. First, what do I need to do now to apply for a PhD in a year? A Masters in Economics, so I started with that. In the meantime, I got a job as a Junior Professional Associate at the World Bank in the Buenos Aires office. This position lasted only two years, as the World Bank encourages juniors to pursue their academic endeavours. That really helped. By the time I was done with my Masters and with my two years at the World Bank I was excited about pursuing a PhD. It was also hard to leave Argentina, but once again, step by step. I could always come back if I did not like it. I liked it so much, I never came back. CN: What factors influenced your decision to continue your career in Spain, rather than the USA or Argentina, where you also have professional experience? VV: In academia, at least in economics, for most of us, our job offers determine where we will live. My husband and I are both in academia, we work on related topics, and Barcelona was a place where we were both happy to live and where both of us have fulfilling job opportunities. CN: Having progressed from an undergraduate to postgraduate, and through researcher and assistant professor positions, which stage(s) of your education and career stand out in your memory as the most challenging? VV: Academia is tough, and I was lucky enough to have only one really challenging moment in my career, which was the third year of the PhD. I was good at taking classes and exams, and then that was over, and I had to do research. How did you do research? I knew I liked theory, but how do you write a model? How do you choose an interesting question that you can actually answer? It was a lonely process: in my office, lots of frustration and staring at a white empty board. But then it happened, who knows how. In the middle of my fourth year I was already excited about what I was doing, somewhat knew what I was doing, and it has been exciting since then (disclaimer: doing research is always challenging, a strange mixture of frustration and excitement). CN: ...And which stage was the most enjoyable? VV: The most enjoyable was probably my job market, where I could present my research to a lot of people who were actually interested! I learned how nice it was to discuss the things you thought about in your office with the profession. It was really nice to know other people also found the problems I addressed interesting. Nothing is as intense as the job market in terms of visibility, but since then, the part I enjoy the most is being in my office alone thinking about the questions I care about, and then discussing my research with other researchers in the field (seminar, conferences, etc) CN: Between 2013 and 2021 you were awarded no less than 7 prizes and 7 scholarships. To what extent do you think these recognitions of your skill have helped you advance your career? VV: Wow, when you put it like that … I was not aware of this! I was extremely lucky to have my first job at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where I was an Assistant Professor. This of course made a great impact in my career through two channels. First, it increased my visibility in the profession, and that is important when you are a young researcher (for example, it increases the chances of receiving awards). Second, and most importantly, I was able to spend the first four years of my career surrounded by the best academics working in my field, and I learned immensely from them. "My advice would be to pursue creative research, not prizes." Victoria Vanasco CN: …so how strongly would you advise students and young people just starting out in their career to pursue prizes? VV: I never pursued prizes, and I do not think that is something you can do. Also, prizes do not really change much in your career; you feel good when receiving them, but in the end, in our profession, you are judged by the quality of the research you do. So my advice would be to pursue creative research, not prizes. CN: In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about the pressure on young academics to secure funding for their research, and by extension the insecurity around many junior academic positions. Did you experience this pressure? And what would your advice be to young scholars who are facing this? VV: I never had to struggle for funding, mainly because I have never been at institutions that struggle for funding. Here in Europe grant applications are a central part of our academic life, so we learn how to apply to them, and some work and some don’t. Also, as I work on applied theory, all I need is pen and paper, so research funding is not a determinant of the research I can do (while it is for other types of research or fields of study). CN: Thank you for your time! Victoria Vanasco - Short Biography (from CREI webpage): Victoria Vanasco is a Researcher at the Centre de Recerca en Economia International (CREi). Before joining CREi, she was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She earned her PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley in 2014, and she has a Masters in Finance and a B.A. in Economics from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, in Argentina, where she is from. Before earning her PhD, she spent two years as a Junior Professional Associate at the World Bank. Her research has been published in top peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics. Among other awards and grants, Victoria is the recipient of the 2018 Junior Prize in Monetary Economics and Finance awarded by Banque de France and Toulouse School of Economics, and of an ERC-Starting Grant for the period 2021-2026 for her project “INFOMAK: Information, Markets, and the Macroeconomy”. She is also a Research Fellow at CEPR, an Affiliated Professor at the Barcelona School of Economics (BSE) and at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), an Associate Editor at the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and a member of the Editorial Board at The Review of Economic Studies. She also serves in the governing bodies of the European Finance Association, the European Economic Association, the Spanish Finance Association, and the Finance Theory Group Her research focuses on topics related to information asymmetries and their impact on financial markets and the real economy. She studies factors that lead to information and belief heterogeneity, and how these factors impact the incentives of market players to screen and monitor assets, with a focus on understanding how regulatory policies can increase liquidity and discipline in markets. Image Credit: CREI / Aksonsat Uanthoeng from Pexels
Victoria Vanasco is a Senior Researcher at CREI (Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional) in Barcelona, Spain, as well as Adjunct Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and and Affiliated Professor at Barcelona School of Economics. As a newly tenured economist, she talks to Christopher Nash, Managing Director of INOMICS, about her career path. For readers currently working in academia with an ambition to achieve tenure, her experience offers valuable insight.
Why I Didn’t Use AI for my PhD Application
However, as a member of INOMICS’ editorial board, I found that AI tools back then lacked the ability to write a thorough, in-depth, and engaging article about economics topics such as how corruption can affect economic growth or the pros and cons of focusing on “mesoeconomics”. We decided to not use AI tools in our article-writing or editing process. Similarly, I decided not to use AI tools at all when I was applying for PhD programs. That’s not to say that I think these models can’t ever be helpful – I’ve found that AI LLM models are very helpful for one thing in particular: generating ideas. However, I’m serious about becoming a PhD economist, and was determined to submit the very best of my own writing for my applications. Further, there’s always a concern that using AI tools would be considered a form of plagiarism. I think not using AI tools at all for my application was the right choice, and I think it’ll be the right choice for you, too. What’s more, even if AI models become incredibly capable “economists” on their own, I think eschewing them will still be the right choice for your application process. Without further ado, let’s explore the reasons why. First: hallucination adds extra work, and relying on AI delays you from building your own expertise AI models are known to hallucinate. That means, when using them for an important purpose, checking the AI’s output for accuracy is critically important – but that adds work that I didn’t feel was worth it for my application. I felt that the effort I’d have needed to spend studying each aspect of the AI model’s output (to ensure it was accurate) would have been inefficient. Instead, I spent time reading the economics literature myself, seeing what interested me, and reading about how other economists in the space structured their research. This was very helpful, especially as I began to outline my own phd research proposal. Think of it this way: if you want to be a successful PhD student, you’ll need to understand a large portion of the literature in your subfield anyway. You may as well get started during the application process! This will greatly help you with any research proposal you must write, and with any conversations (or admissions interviews!) you have with potential supervisors. Rather than take an AI model’s potentially erroneous output and start from there, I searched Google Scholar and RePEc myself. I read the literature to see if there was a gap that my ideas could fill. I put together a methodology that I knew was sound, using econometric methods that I was confident I understood. I also found public datasets that I knew were accessible and relevant, to ensure that realistically usable data was available – and to show that on my application. Finally, I wrote my own ideas for future research, and studied the research interests of the faculty at the institutions I was applying to. Sometimes, doing something the “hard way” really is the best in the long run. After all, there are no free lunches. Second: personal essays require a personal touch Some schools require specific essay questions or have topics they want you to broach in your personal statement. For this reason, it’s highly advisable to double-check each institution’s expectations for your personal statement (if they do, this is usually found or referenced in the school’s online portal where you upload the statement). I had to write several different personal statements, as each school had slightly different needs. Clearly, these statements require a personal touch. If you outsource the work to a machine, you’re preventing the admissions committee from hearing your voice, and from reading your story as you would tell it. This clashes with the entire point of a personal statement: in your application, you must show the admissions committee who you are and why you wish to study for an economics PhD. This may sound like a “fluffy” or silly concern, but the truth is that admissions committees get many applications from very qualified students. Sometimes, deciding who to give an offer to can come down to less measurable factors, such as how well the committee can picture you succeeding at their institution or fitting into their faculty’s research interests. A good personal statement will help you convince them that you’re a good candidate and pursuing a PhD for the right reasons. Apart from this, many admissions officers can, or at least claim that they can, identify work written by an AI. Whether it is an overuse of stock phrases, an inconsistent register, or a “genericness” in the style or argumentation, ultimately if an admissions officer or potential supervisor suspects that a submission is AI written, at best they will treat your application with scepticism, or at worst discard it. Overall, you ought to give the admissions team as much of a sense of who you are as you can. Express your personality, show them your enthusiasm. AI simply can’t do that as well as you. Third: AI output is not your work, and this limits your growth Different people may feel differently about whether or not, or to what extent, using AI tools constitutes plagiarism. Whichever camp you personally fall into, though, the following statement is true: an AI model produces output that you did not write yourself. And this is a problem if you aim to be the best economist you can be. This is related to the first point about the hallucination problem, but goes deeper. AI tools offer a cognitive shortcut. However, if you’re always taking a shortcut, even if only to kick off ideas and begin your work, you’re robbing yourself of the ability to learn how to start a research process well, which can make future research tasks harder for you. I know this would likely be true for me, because I’d noticed this tendency in myself long before the advent of popular AI models. Allow me to explain. When learning math in grad school, I often felt very confident that I understood the teacher’s example as they worked it in class. Yet, as soon as they stepped away from the chalkboard and asked me to solve a similar problem on my own, my mind would often blank. Suddenly, recalling the right steps to take – and understanding exactly what they meant – was much harder. I think this is a relatable experience for many, and I believe that over-relying on AI tools is just the same as relying on a teacher to begin solving a math problem for you. It seems innocuous when you still have the aid of the teacher. A limit or integral — or the beginning of an econometric theorem — all seem very straightforward when your teacher sets them up for you. But when the aid is removed, suddenly, our brains may panic because they haven’t actually learned how to properly get started. Remember, your brain is an expert in finding shortcuts, and that sometimes means you don’t learn as well as you think you did! Aside from this, research has shown that if you over-rely on AI tools you may – even subconsciously – become worse at detecting hallucinations, and stop thinking as much about serious issues like plagiarism. As Zhai, Wibowo, and Li put it in a 2023 paper1: “Despite the undeniable advantages of AI dialogue systems in streamlining research processes and enhancing academic efficiency, our analysis reveals a concerning trend: the potential erosion of critical cognitive skills due to ethical challenges such as misinformation, algorithmic biases, plagiarism, privacy breaches, and transparency issues.” Thus, I’m confident that over-relying on AI tools to begin – say – your research proposal literature review also limits your growth as an economist, even if you don’t realize it. If you don’t take the time to actually read and process the papers in economics yourself, you are missing out on a great deal of knowledge. Even simple meta-knowledge about what exists in the body of economics literature can be important for your career. It’s potentially embarrassing to not know of a famous or seminal paper in economics, and it certainly wouldn’t look good if you aren’t aware of the literature in your own niche subfield. Fourth: AI can’t output work up to the same quality as you or I can Truthfully, the thought of using AI on my PhD application never seriously crossed my mind. That’s because, through my time writing and editing for INOMICS, I’ve continually tested new AI models to see how good they are at writing thoughtful economics articles. I have yet to find an AI model that can write a helpful, informative, and analytic article the way that Hanna Sakhno, Dr. Sahar Milani, Dr. Tom McKenzie, Dr. Gómez-Pineda, or I can. AI models have yet to demonstrate the ability to go beyond presenting common discourse about a topic and teach the reader something new, or present things in a new light. And I know that if AI models aren’t up to my standards for what we post on the INOMICS website, it will not be up to an admissions committee’s standards for a PhD application essay or research proposal, either. I’m confident that someone seriously interested in pursuing an economics PhD is much brighter than even our most advanced LLMs or neural networks today. Perhaps that will change one day in the future – but even if it does, doing the work yourself will develop you into a much better economist than relying on AI output ever would. Conclusion I learned a lot throughout the process of applying for my economics PhD. I gained a solid preliminary understanding of my topic area that will help me immensely when I begin to write my first publishable paper. Further, after combing through the literature myself, I’m confident that the research I want to pursue would be advancing the field in a way that hasn’t been done before, which is exciting. I don’t think AI had a place in that process. And, at the end of the day, my hard work landed me a very generous offer of admission at an excellent university that I’m excited about. So, my fellow economist hopefuls, take it from me: don’t rely on AI models to write your applications for you. You owe it to yourself to do the hard work. After all, there are no free lunches in economics or in life. References: 1: Zhai, C., Wibowo, S. & Li, L.D. The effects of over-reliance on AI dialogue systems on students' cognitive abilities: a systematic review. Smart Learn. Environ. 11, 28 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-024-00316-7 A note on AI usage at INOMICS Here at INOMICS, we’re not against using new technology. On the contrary: on our website, you’ll find helpful AI tools – such as a feature that generates questions (and answers) for our Economics Terms A-Z articles, or an AI Summary button for our article pages. But, when it comes to producing articles and resources, quality and accuracy are our highest priority. So while we sometimes use AI tools to help us brainstorm ideas, suggest phrasing, translate existing text, or generate interesting header images for articles (like the one on this page!), when we have experimented using AI to produce longer articles, we have always found the results to be lacking, not to mention sharing many of the concerns expressed in this article. As such we do not (yet) publish Advice articles, Blog posts or economics terms/lessons that were partially or wholly written using AI. Image Credit: INOMICS, using Canva Magic Studio AI Image Generator
AI tools have become widespread since news of ChatGPT-3.5 prompted me, in early 2023, to make an OpenAI account. I remember sitting in a coffee shop, sipping on a latte, and holding a half-dozen “conversations” with the newly released model. I asked it a series of math questions. I asked it about politics and about poetry. I asked it to write me a short story. I even asked it questions about niche topics like Settlers of Catan to see if it “understood” strategy in the context of a game. And, of course, I asked it about economics.
Take a deep breath, read this article, and start brainstorming! Step 0: Understand What a Research Proposal is For The main purpose of your research proposal is to give the admissions committee an idea of two things: your ability to conduct quality research in economics, and your suitability for the program itself. Because of its importance, it’s also highly advisable to start this process as early as possible – ideally several months before application deadlines. Your proposal should indicate to the admissions committee that you understand the field and are capable of (with the right training and supervision) producing quality economics research. The topic you choose, the initial literature review you conduct, your intended methodology, and more: all of these will signal to the admissions committee that you either understand what it takes to conduct serious research, or that you do not. But even if the committee believes your research proposal is excellent, you may not be admitted. That’s because the second purpose of the proposal is to show that your research interests are a good fit for that specific economics department’s work. Remember, to earn your PhD, there must be a faculty member at that school who’s willing to supervise your research! You could have an absolutely amazing research proposal on microfinance, yet be rejected by the program on the grounds that none of their economics faculty are interested in microfinance. That’s why the next two steps in the process are critically important. Step 1: Identify your Research Interests Before you start writing your proposal, you obviously need a topic. It’s important to identify what you’re most interested in, especially since – if you’re accepted – research in this area will become your life for the next several years! The field of economics is vast, and there are a wide variety of papers being published. If you’re unsure where to start, first consider the economics classes you’ve enjoyed most in the past. Do you enjoy microeconomic theory, or empirical macroeconomics? Perhaps behavioral economics is more your style, or maybe environmental economics is calling to you. Once you’ve chosen a general subfield (or two), reading recently published papers in those subfields is a great way to start digging for a topic. Ask yourself: which of these papers are most interesting? What research methods could you alter, or employ for a different but related question, to produce original work? What further research identified by the authors sounds interesting to you? Is there any topic or question that you think is missing from current research output? If you’re still struggling to settle on a topic after exploring, check out our article about how to choose a topic for your economics research for more advice. Step 2: Investigate the School and Faculty Research Interests You’ve chosen a research topic; excellent work! Now, recall that an important part of the research proposal’s job is to show the admissions committee that your interests align with those of the economics department. It’s time for you to start a very important investigation. This process will look different depending on the type of program you apply to. For instance, many European-style PhD programs will require you to reach out to potential supervisors directly, and receive their approval before you submit your application. In this case, you must research the school’s faculty, check their research output, and message the individuals that you think would be both interested in your research idea and make an effective supervisor for you – preferably far in advance of the deadline. American-style PhD programs, or PhD programs that begin with a taught component like some MPhil/PhD options, may not ask you to identify a supervisor when you apply. However, even these programs will be judging your proposal based on how well it fits within the research interests of the economics department – so you’ll still need to do some digging. Overall, you should expect to spend a decent amount of time looking up professors and their research interests, as well as any specialized research groups within the economics department and the department’s research output. Resources like RePEc may help you out here. As you investigate, ask yourself – honestly – whether you could see these faculty members being interested in your topic and choosing to supervise you. If your answer isn’t a clear “yes”, keep in mind that it will be significantly harder for that admissions committee to justify giving you an offer. Depending on how many schools you intend to apply to, you may even consider writing multiple research proposals on different topics. While this may sound like a lot of work, it’s a far better strategy than writing just one proposal and hoping it fits everywhere. Step 3: Drafting: What to Include in Your Proposal After you’ve chosen a research topic and confirmed that there are professors who would most likely want to supervise your idea, it’s time to start drafting. You can think of a research proposal as a mini-research paper, where you walk through the typical steps of doing research but stop short of actually conducting data collection and testing hypotheses. Instead, you simply describe what you would do. A research proposal typically includes the following sections: - Introduction/research question - Preliminary literature review - Proposed methodology & proposed data - Possible future research - References & Bibliography You may also choose to include small sections on the potential supervisors you’ve identified at the program in question, why your research is a good fit for the department, and your funding situation. Introduction & research question This brief section should be thought of like an abstract, except that you don’t have conclusions to share. Instead, state clearly what you aim to research, and what your main research questions/hypotheses are. Preliminary literature review This is an important section. Here, you ought to write a literature review as if you’re actually going to conduct the research. What is the current state of the economics literature surrounding this question? What insights have other papers offered? Where’s the gap in the literature? What papers will you be mainly relying on or building off of? Answering these questions as you write your review will help show the admissions committee that you understand how to read the literature and conduct quality research. Don’t skimp on this section, or the reading you must do in order to build it properly. The more you understand about the literature surrounding your topic, the easier it will be for you to write about your methodology, and the more well-prepared you’ll be for potential interviews. A side note here about using AI – while AI tools can help you identify sources that are relevant to your literature review, do not rely on them completely. Further, do not use AI to write any portion of your research proposal. If you use AI to help find sources, take the time to then read the sources carefully and critically. Are they really as relevant as they seem? Do the findings truly match any claims you have made in your proposal? Don’t get caught out by trusting that an AI suggestion is a good suggestion. As of 2025, AI tools are far from infallible when it comes to postgraduate level research, and in the worst case might even create statistics out of thin air to support your argument (this is a common AI problem known as “hallucination”). Use AI tools with extreme caution, if at all! Methodology & Data In this section, you should aim to be as clear and objective as possible. Restate your hypothesis, then describe the methods you intend to employ to test it. List specific data sources as much as you can. Use econometric language, identify specific models you’ll likely employ, or describe the type of experiment you’ll design. This section should show clearly that you’ve put serious thought into answering your research questions and that you know how to test your hypotheses effectively. Further, listing actual data sources will make it clear that your research idea is feasible, not just hypothetical. Along with the literature review, this section should be the largest and most comprehensive in your proposal. Don’t hold anything back – aim to impress your readers here! Future research Including a small section about future research that could stem from your work is a nice touch. The faculty and admissions committee understand that a research proposal doesn’t always end up being exactly what a PhD student will work on. But, if you list future or related research that could stem from this proposal, it’ll be easy for the committee to see how you could continue to become an expert on this particular sub-topic, and how you could contribute to the literature for years to come. It could also be a good way for you to pivot, if you later decide that your original proposal wouldn’t be the best dissertation topic. References & Bibliography Citing your sources is crucially important. That’s partly because plagiarism is a serious offense, of course. But in addition, having a quality bibliography and reference section is another great signal to the committee that you’re a good candidate and should be seriously considered. Step 4: Reaching Out to Potential Supervisors Drafting your research proposal is no walk in the park, so once you’ve finished, pat yourself on the back! Depending on the types of programs you’re applying to, identifying a willing supervisor may or may not be part of the application process. If it is, you should start reaching out to faculty members who might be willing to supervise you as soon as you have an initial proposal drafted. Include the draft in your message to them, along with your CV. Typically, professors are fairly responsive. Even so, your mileage may vary with this process. If your proposal seems overly amateurish or underbaked, you’re unlikely to get a positive response, even if the topic aligns with the individuals’ research interests. Further, some professors may not be accepting new students. Sometimes university websites indicate which professors are open to receiving new PhD students, but it’s entirely possible that your first choice of supervisor isn’t available. Even if you do receive a positive response, you may be asked to make updates or edits before a professor is willing to say “yes”. If you’ve reached this point, don’t despair – it’s actually a very good sign that you’re on the right track, and that you’ve done well in finding a potential supervisor with similar research interests to you. Step 5: Don’t Give Up! Writing a quality research proposal is hard work. So is studying for your PhD! But it’s important to keep in mind that there is a reason for all of this work. Finding and getting admitted to the right economics program will make your journey towards earning your PhD much more enjoyable. Moreover, it’ll help immensely when the trials and difficulties of PhD research threaten to burn you out. Crafting your research proposal should get you excited to narrow down into a specific topic, and imagine getting your own research published. What question have other economists not answered, but you think is important or interesting? How can you uniquely contribute to the literature? Your research proposal should give you a clear idea of the answer! Image Credit: Fizkes / Shutterstock (Licensed Image - Copyright) <11an>limit3;categories:PhD Programs</11an>
If you’re applying for a European-style economics PhD or Master’s of Research program, it’s highly likely that you’ll be asked to submit a research proposal. This is a document where you’ll describe the original research project you intend to pursue if you’re accepted into the economics program. This is going to be a fairly intense process. While not legally binding, this document is a major part of your application, and it’s extremely important to write a convincing and high-quality proposal. Giving yourself as much time as possible to work on it can only help you. However, if you’re applying to PhDs for the first time, this is also most likely your first time writing an economics research proposal. So, what to do?
Applying for a PhD: Should you do a Master of Research?
Introducing the Master of Research<o:p></o:p> The Master of Research (or MRes) is an advanced post-graduate degree that is considered a stepping-stone towards PhD study. Often, and perhaps confusingly, this type of degree requires applicants to have a Master’s degree in the relevant subject area already. Importantly, the two types of Master’s are often differentiated: a Master of Science in Economics is often referred to as a “taught” Master’s, while an MRes is referred to as a “research” Master’s. However, an MRes is still a Master’s degree and not a PhD-level certification.<o:p></o:p> These degrees can go by several different names, and are most commonly available in the UK, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, and Hong Kong. These programs may also be listed as MPhil/PhD programs (standing for Master of Philosophy/PhD), or “Master of Letters”, abbreviated M.Litt programs (typically in Ireland). Although this type of degree can be very helpful as a stepping-stone to a PhD, they can be little-known outside of the countries that offer them.<o:p></o:p> MRes programs aim to prepare their students for serious academic research work, and expect that students come already equipped with significant subject matter knowledge – hence why many outright require applicants to already hold a taught Master’s degree. These programs typically last one to two years and are rarely longer. Most programs also require students to write a Master’s thesis (even if you’ve already written one before!). After completing an MRes in economics, students will have training not only in economics subject matter, but in conducting economic research as well, something that Master of Science programs often don’t have much time for. Many MRes programs – as evidenced by the MPhil/PhD moniker – often expect their students to continue into a PhD program immediately afterward.<o:p></o:p> Is an MRes right for you?<o:p></o:p> Pursuing an Economics MRes (or equivalently, an MPhil/PhD or MLitt program) could be an excellent choice for your path to a PhD. However, it’s far from the only option. How to decide? One reason to pursue an MRes over immediately applying for PhD programs is that an MRes will help your academic profile become stronger. The additional training in research specifically shows that you’re serious about pursuing academic work, and a high mark on the MRes thesis could be a significant indicator of your suitability for an economics PhD. Thus, this could be a great option for former Master’s students with good, but not great, grades. Grades are very important when applying for PhD programs. High marks in an MRes could cover nicely for more average grades in a Master of Science, making you a more competitive PhD applicant.<o:p></o:p> More importantly – also for those with top grades in their previous economics degree – an MRes program is a gentler way to explore the rigor and lifestyle of conducting academic research than simply jumping straight into a PhD program. This makes it an excellent choice for students who are still “on the fence” with regard to a PhD, as you’ll get a strong sense of what PhD research would entail. If the MRes goes well, and the work is enjoyable, it’s a great sign, both for you and for potential PhD supervisors, that you’re ready for the rigor and discipline required to get your PhD. If not – perhaps a career in industry is a better choice for you. Finally, completing an MRes gives you more time to meet students and faculty and explore the field of economics. If you’re unsure of what specifically you’d like to research, this can be a great way to explore sub-fields on the frontier of economics research and the methods you must master in order to succeed. It can also help you build relationships with faculty, who can guide and advise you, and who may even become your future PhD supervisor if you choose to continue. It’s important to note that MRes students are typically expected to continue on to a PhD, but it’s also possible to leave after completing the MRes and seek a job in industry. Some research-intensive professions may appreciate the additional research experience without requiring a PhD. However, this situation corresponds to a minority of graduates. If you plan to work in industry after earning your MRes, it’s highly advisable to have specific positions in mind that would justify the MRes qualification, but not require a PhD.<o:p></o:p> RA vs MRes: similar benefits, different experiences Applying directly to a PhD is very possible, particularly for strong students with excellent grades who have had opportunities to participate in academic research during their studies. But, for those students who wish to spend some time gaining more research experience before diving into the full commitment of a PhD, it helps to understand the differences between doing an MRes or working as an RA. It’s worth noting that many of the benefits of earning an MRes have some overlap with the benefits you’d enjoy from working as a Research Assistant. If you want research experience before diving into a PhD, both are options you should strongly consider. Research Assistants help professors conduct actual academic work that will be published. It’s a great way to get your name out there and begin to add research credentials to your academic CV. However, being an RA limits your exposure to the project(s) that you’re given. If you don’t end up liking the sub-field of that specific research, it can be awkward to pivot to a new one. And, you will likely be very beholden to the needs of the project(s) and professor(s) leading them, with little room to explore your own research interests. An MRes offers less of a chance to have your name appear in published research, but is a more structured way to gain additional research experience. And, you’ll be able to write your Master thesis in a field that interests you the most, while building a potential foundation for your PhD thesis. Finally, the added benefit of earning high grades in an MRes shouldn’t be overlooked if you wish to improve your academic profile. Both RAs and MRes programs may be connected to a PhD program. In both cases, you may be able to start your PhD in parallel. Usually, for an RAship, the PhD is expected to be related to the project you are working with, and your supervisor is usually expected to be one of the professors you’ve been working for. For an MRes program, your eventual PhD topic may be more flexible – though it’s certainly advisable to do your MRes thesis on a topic you expect to explore via your future dissertation. Finally, one major difference between these two paths is funding. Research assistants are paid, while MRes students must often pay tuition (though of course, scholarships may be available). Financial considerations are of course very important, and you must make the right decision for your current situation and goals.<o:p></o:p> Concluding Thoughts<o:p></o:p> Overall, applying for a Master of Research program is a perhaps lesser-known but excellent option when preparing for a PhD. Whether or not it’s the right path for you depends on your own goals and personal situation. We hope this article was helpful. Here at INOMICS, we wish you all the best in your studies and future endeavors. Good luck! Image Credit: Atstock Productions / Shutterstock (licensed image, copyright) <11an>limit3;categories:PhD Candidate;Research Assistant / Technician;PhD Programs</11an><o:p></o:p>
There are many paths to preparing for an economics PhD. Most students apply for PhD programs soon after finishing their Master’s degree. Some even apply directly after their Bachelor’s degree. Others work first, for example as a research assistant before applying. There are benefits to all of these approaches, and depending on your academic accomplishments and personal goals, some paths may suit you better than others. In this article we look in depth at the merits of a Masters of Research (MRes) as an option for PhD hopefuls. We also compare the MRes path with a direct application for a PhD after your studies, or with a year or two of work experience before applying for a PhD.<o:p></o:p>
Economist Earnings by Job Title and Degree in 2023
We begin by examining the average earnings of economists by various job titles around the world. Figure 1: global average salaries by job title (global data, PPP-adjusted) Average salaries for economists follow a clear trend globally. Unsurprisingly, there is an increase in earnings as academic economists are promoted from Lecturer/Assistant Professor level to Associate Professor and finally full Professor status. Similarly, industry economists continue to earn more as they rise from Junior Level Positions to Middle Level Positions and finally Senior/Executive Level Positions. Consultant and Researcher/Analyst roles out-earn Middle Level Positions, and earn less than Senior/Executive positions. Note that these numbers are slightly different than what can be found in the INOMICS Salary Report’s Figure 12 (for example). This is because Figure 1 is a simple average rather than a cross-segment average, which the Salary Report utilizes. One surprising result from Figure 1 is that academic economists out-earn industry economists by a substantial margin. Regionally, however, this pattern does not always hold true; in the INOMICS Salary Report we find that academic economists typically earn less than industry economists until they are promoted to a full Professor of Economics, at which point they tend to earn as much as the highest-paid industry earners. This phenomenon can be seen in the Salary Report’s “Regional Analyses of Academic and Industry Economist Salaries by Job Title” subsection. Here, in Figure 1, the reason academic economists out-earn their industry counterparts is due to the geographic distribution of survey respondents in worldwide data; 45% of the survey respondents in academic roles are from the high-paying “Global West” region while only 30% of industry respondents are from this same region, skewing the results downward for industry roles compared to academic (the “Global West” region is defined below). Nevertheless, this global data paints an excellent first ballpark picture of what economists can expect from their earnings. One important consideration that aspiring economists will have to make is whether or not they ought to study for an economics PhD, as a pay increase is expected upon earning this highest level of degree. Let’s examine how Figure 1 changes when we consider economists who hold a PhD versus those with a Master’s degree. Figure 2: Global average salaries by job title and highest degree held (global data, PPP-adjusted) Figure 2 begins to paint a more nuanced picture of economist earnings by job title. In almost every case, holding a PhD has increased earnings by job title substantially. This is especially true for industry economist jobs globally, particularly for Middle Level and Senior/Executive positions. In both of these cases, earnings more than double for economists with a PhD compared to a Master’s. One interesting exception is for the full Professor category, where Master’s-degree-holding Professors out-earn PhD Professors. This does not appear to be a mistake. First, the sample size for Professors of Economics with a Master’s degree is dwarfed by the sample size of PhD Professors (only 5 Professors of Economics hold a Master’s degree compared to 103 PhD holders). This speaks to the fact that in order to pursue a full professorship, economists should expect to earn a PhD as a minimum job requirement in most cases. Further, the few Professors holding a Master’s degree and not a PhD have decades of experience in economics, which suggests that they are probably former industry economists who left industry after decades of work to become professors. These economists were likely earning high salaries in industry, and so command high salaries as Professors due to their bringing a high degree of industry expertise to their new roles as well. While this is not necessarily a typical career path, it’s interesting to note that this route into academia may exist for former industry economists, without a massive drop in salary. This raises another interesting point: economists with a PhD are probably older on average than those with a Master’s degree. Therefore, we examine years of experience to try and determine if holding a higher degree is truly a meaningful contributing factor to the increased salaries in Figure 2, or if years of work experience is more important for the salary increase. Job Title Avg. Years of Experience (PhD) Avg. Years of Experience (Master) Differential Professor 25.9 19.8 6.1 Associate Professor 17.6 9.3 8.3 Lecturer / Assistant Professor 9.5 8.1 1.4 Consultant 19.4 12.5 6.9 Researcher / Analyst 11.1 8.2 2.9 Senior / Executive Level Position 20.1 13.4 6.6 Middle Level Position 15.7 9.8 5.9 Lower Level Position 5.0 4.1 0.9 Figure 3: Work Experience differential in favor of PhD Economists by job title Figure 3 lists the number of years of work experience on average for each job title category between PhD holders and Master’s degree holders. Column 3 additionally calculates the differential in favor of PhD economists as a simple subtraction. Figure 3 shows that PhD holders do have more years of work experience on average in every category. However, the average differential is under 7 years of experience, which – while significant – is probably not enough to explain the large salary increases in Figure 2 on its own. Some of the large salary increases are likely due to the relatively higher experience level of PhD holders, but it also seems that earning a PhD greatly increases each type of economists’ earnings independently from experience. The takeaways, then, are clear: for economists who wish to work in any role, earning a PhD is clearly worth the investment. Industry economists seem to benefit more on average from earning a PhD than academic economists, even though the latter type of economist often must earn a PhD to attain full Professor status. But before deciding if doing a PhD is right for them, readers may be curious about how this data breaks down regionally. In the remainder of this article, we consider regions with similar levels of pay alongside each other; these are the “Global West” and the “Global South”. The former consists of North America, Western Europe & Scandinavia, and East Asia & Australasia. The latter consists of the Caribbean, South & Central America, Africa, South Asia, Central, Southern & Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, Central Asia & North Africa regions. Using two overarching regions for the following analyses is useful to grant us a high sample size when breaking job titles down further by category, but in the INOMICS Salary Report we consider each individual region on its own. See the Salary Report 2023 section “Regional Analyses of Academic and Industry Economist Salaries by Job Title” for more information on each specific region’s breakdown. Breakdown for the Global West Figure 4 repeats Figure 2 but considers only economist jobs in the relatively higher-earning “Global West” region. Figure 4: Global West average salaries by job title and highest degree held (PPP-adjusted) Average salaries in the Global West (Figure 4) closely follow the same pattern as worldwide average salaries (Figure 2), with a few notable differences. First, among respondents from these generally richer countries there were zero survey respondents who held a PhD and were working in a “Junior Level Position”, which is sensible. Second, the massive salary increases for certain categories – particularly Middle Level and Senior/Executive Level Positions – are somewhat less than the worldwide average, though these two categories still feature very substantial salary increases. Finally, the Professor category features a similar quirk where Master’s-degree-holding Professors out-earn PhD Professors. But again, this is likely due to industry economists who choose to become Professors later in their careers, as the sample size is quite small and the years of experience quite high (in this region, Professors with PhDs have on average about 25 years of experience compared with 38 years for Professors with Master’s degrees). Furthermore, industry economists in these world regions tend to out-earn academic economists, so an industry economist becoming a professor would likely demand a correspondingly high salary. Figure 5: Global South average salaries by job title and highest degree held (PPP-adjusted) The worldwide trends identified in Figure 2 remain largely true in the “Global South” countries (Figure 5) as well. In these lower-paying world regions, Master’s degree holders earn much more comparable salaries to PhD holders in most industry roles; however, in this region Consultant and Researcher/Analyst salaries increase dramatically for PhD holders. Meanwhile, Professor salaries are quite high for Master’s degree holders. In addition to the aforementioned reasons, in the Global South region it may not always be as strictly necessary for Professors of Economics to hold a PhD (although it is surely still a boon to one’s competitiveness). Which job titles value a PhD the most? Overall, then, this article has painted a clear picture: earning a PhD, regardless of job title, improves one’s earning potential significantly in most regions. This is especially true in industry roles, where employers offer a pay premium to compete for sought-after economics PhDs. Academic economists in many regions must earn a PhD in order to be competitive for the full Professor role, though a small portion become Professors after many years in industry. Excluding the anomalous Professor category, where the rare Master’s degree holders earn very highly, most economist jobs yield higher pay for economists with PhDs compared to those with Master’s degrees. Judging by Figure 2, it appears that Senior/Executive, Middle Level and Consultant roles feature the largest pay increases for PhD holders. Figure 6 below examines the pay differences from Figure 2 in more detail: Figure 6: Percentage increase in pay from earning a PhD by job title (worldwide) Figure 6 shows clearly that economists working in a Middle Level Position stand to benefit the most from earning a PhD compared to their colleagues with a master’s degree, followed by Senior / Executive Level Position economists. Although in Figure 2 Consultants appeared to face relatively high earnings increases, percentage-wise it represents a fairly typical increase among industry roles. Academic roles feature relatively low earnings increases from earning a PhD, but in order to advance, academic economists are expected to earn PhDs. Again, Professors actually earn less on average if they hold a PhD. But, this is due to the small amount of very high-earning Master’s degree economists who were likely given a professorship after decades of industry experience (as they have higher average years of experience than PhD Professors as well). Overall – and particularly in industry, where earning a PhD is more of a choice – economists stand to gain a significant amount by furthering their education. Earning 60% or more than their peers without an equivalent degree is a substantial benefit. In the higher-paying world regions, salary increases from earning a PhD are smaller percentage-wise but higher in absolute terms due to high base salaries. Meanwhile in lower-paying world regions, Master’s degree holders earn more comparable salaries to PhD holders in most industry roles (excepting Consultant and Researcher / Analyst roles), though earning a PhD still increases earnings. The results, then, are clear: in terms of potential salary, earning a PhD is a significant benefit for almost every economist regardless of job title. Of course, pay alone is not the only consideration to make when deciding to earn another degree, and some economists can find meaningful employment with a Master’s degree. But the benefits of a PhD show that aspiring economists should strongly consider planning to complete a PhD in economics at some point during their career, or have strong reasons for not doing so. Otherwise, significant earnings are being left on the table. For an aspiring economist, the choice of job title and level of education is likely influenced by myriad other factors beyond salary expectations – personal life goals and choices matter, too. And of course, the job titles examined here are overarching categories and not individually specific. However, this data-driven insight can certainly help inform those choices. For more detail about economist earnings by job title and region, see the INOMICS Salary Report, which is available freely for download. Header image credit: Freepik.com / Magnific (free license)
Aspiring economists may be curious to know: how much do economists earn in different types of jobs? The INOMICS Salary Report contains a wealth of data about economist pay by job title and region (among many other factors). This article takes Salary Report data on salaries by job title and analyzes it from a new angle, including highest degree earned, which will help younger economists to plan their career path.
This quote from the famous economist Keynes raises a number of areas that help us begin to answer the question of how to succeed as an economist. Reading the quote, an economics student may ask: in the modern age, what are the necessary skills one must possess in order to become a “successful” economist? The answer is, of course, hugely subjective. It may also fluctuate as one’s own career goals change. Here, we will identify some of the age-old must-haves – as well as some of the new skills economists ought to acquire in the age of climate change, globalization, and AI. Before we begin: the need for economists The present age is a remarkable time, probably among the most exciting and challenging times ever to enter the field. Many economic models and presumptions of the past are continually showing themselves to be outdated and in need of theoretical improvements. This has much to do with the new challenges facing our generation. Whether it’s in confronting climate deterioration, demographic change, the rise of AI and automation, wealth inequality, or even incorporating basic realism into textbooks, there is room for increasingly advanced economic models that can more accurately account for the complexities of real life. Beyond the need for improved economic models, though, is a societal and political need. In handling many of these emerging challenges – some of which were wrought by an inability to regulate our own activities – the ailing neoliberal orthodoxy has found itself ill equipped. To borrow the words of economist Howard Reed: “until we ditch the old textbook, we’ll never face up to the challenges of the modern world”. So far, there has been little sign of this happening any time soon; as Prospect editor-in-chief Tom Clark has observed of most Western governments, “out-dated frameworks still inform policy prescriptions”. In fact, searching for alternative solutions may partly explain why there’s been a resurgence of nationalist and even fascist sentiment across democracies in recent times – but those systems have been tried before, and surely do not hold the answers society needs. The responsibility, then, lies with the next generation of economists to combat this deficit of ideas. Optimistic, open-minded, and determined to make the world more livable for all, it is they that must provide the insight, innovation, and policy stewardship needed to guide our future path. Think you have what it takes to answer the call? Read on. What’s needed: the (quantitative) basics It should be no surprise at this point that a familiarity with mathematics and statistics is vital to any aspiring economist. Competence in these areas will allow one to analyze data using econometric techniques such as regression analysis, a necessary skill for nearly any career in economics. Beyond the bread-and-butter quantitative skills, familiarity with data science will help economists navigate popular economic software such as Matlab, R, Python, and STATA. Variants of these software programs will, through necessity, become your future friends; it’s probably best to make their acquaintance as soon as possible. In fact, the entire discipline of data science increasingly intersects with economics. This will only become more true over time as AI tools continue to percolate through the economy. As such, a familiarity with computer science, data science, and programming can only help you. Some recent economics graduates may not yet be comfortable with handling large numerical datasets, using statistical software programs, or building bulletproof economic models to interpret data. It’s easy to take coursework only in one’s specialty or interests during an economics Master’s degree, for example, and to have forgotten the more numerically-focused introductory courses. If you find yourself in this situation, fear not. Consider signing up for professional skills trainings and/or summer schools to fill in the gaps in your skillset, which will not only improve your career prospects, but help you to become an even more capable and well-rounded economist. It’s never a bad idea to explore options like these to keep you on top of your game. Regardless, in order to analyze economic data, learn, and deliver powerful insights that can change the world, competence with the quantitative elements of the field is key. Interdisciplinary knowledge Beyond mathematical and data proficiency, economists ought to be curious, independent thinkers able to reason soundly, and possess the humility to admit when the data has proven one’s own theory wrong. These are excellent qualities to have for an economist, allowing them to glean new truths with minimal bias. Great strides in economics have come from dispassionately examining why things are the way they are and using the resulting models to help prescribe how they can be made better. Economists also tend to benefit greatly from “thinking outside the box”, sometimes going beyond the strict parameters of economics for tools and answers. This is where familiarity with other social sciences becomes key. Learning about other disciplines, particularly those that relate to economics in some way, can help an economist to make breakthroughs. Clearly then, modern economists (and economic theory itself) can benefit from taking up an interdisciplinary approach to research. Dr. Olivier Blanchard, our 2024 Handbook interviewee, named this kind of creativity as an important quality that young economists must demonstrate in order to excel. Communication Skills Another crucial skill is communication, in a clear and concise form, both verbal and written. The complexities of economics can easily be lost on important stakeholders like clients, politicians, constituents, and community members who – we should remind ourselves – don’t have advanced degrees in economics. This is important; the fact that economic processes underpin so much of governmental policy means it’s imperative that decision makers and ultimately the public are up to speed on economic issues, prospective policies and the like. But not everyone can study for a degree in economics. Thus, a great economist will be able to convey complicated, data-backed economic theories through understandable, accessible language. This is quite the skill, and its absence from public discourse can be potentially very damaging. Few would argue, for instance, that the entire British electorate had all of the relevant facts at hand when deliberating withdrawal from the European Union. Further, politicians and the news media around the world often routinely misunderstand the nuances of economics. As Lord Thomas Macauley once stated, as an example of this: “Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular”. The benefits of comparative advantage have been well documented, yet many modern voters around the world rally to the call of protectionist policies, not realizing that those policies will ultimately increase the costs of the goods they buy every day. This is one example to demonstrate the importance of clear economic communication. But of course, it isn’t just public-facing economists who should master communication skills. Business clients and other stakeholders alike should be presented economic facts and recommendations in understandable terms so that they can make properly informed decisions, too. Know this: history fuels continuous improvement in economics One of the many reasons economists were lambasted for their failure to predict the economic crash of 2008 was that it exposed some unrealistic assumptions that economists had grown accustomed to leaning on. This includes analyzing the decision-making of individuals as if everyone was perfectly rational at all times. Pre-2008 economic orthodoxy often assumed that people followed a very rational thought process when faced with a decision. First, list all possible outcomes of all possible options, attach a value to each, and assess potential risk. Next, perform a comprehensive analysis based on the expected returns of each option, and choose the optimal decision. Is this process rational? Certainly. Realistic? Well… Evidently, such purely rational thinking was absent in the lead up to 2008, where banks famously began to package subprime loans and sell them as financial securities that were overvalued. The systematic understatement of risk, fueled by moral hazard, represented a bet that cost the world dearly. Partly in response to such tragedies, economics since its inception has accepted criticisms of its models and failures, and used them to create more robust and realistic models of the economy. One major example of this is the advent of behavioral economics, which increasingly asks how real people behave towards decision-making and risks in ways that aren’t necessarily optimal. It incorporates psychological, cultural, social, and emotional factors into its theories, and is a prime example of how economics can benefit from other social sciences. Calling all future economists In summary, and though there is no strict formula, great economists typically have the statistics and math skills to work with data and derive meaningful insights. They often have a specialization in one or two areas, but benefit greatly from an understanding of others. They are able to emerge from the depths of analysis and communicate the high-level meaning to other important stakeholders who don’t have the same training. And, the absolute best of them possess a drive and motivation to do the right thing, to advance theory, and to make the world a better place. Now more than ever, economists are uniquely suited to help the world understand and navigate the potentially tumultuous future being presented by challenges like climate change and the explosive growth of AI tools. Perhaps you can take up the call and become an economist who will guide us all towards prosperity. The above article includes small sections that were originally written by William Pearse. Header image credit: Freepik.com / Magnific (Free license)
The following article first appeared in the INOMICS Handbook 2024. Download the INOMICS Handbook “The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher…He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician.” – John Maynard Keynes
You may be wondering how to make a strong resume for economics jobs that you’re interested in. Resume tips abound online, and many of them are quite good for your economics job application, too. In this article, we share some of the best ones, as well as economics-specific advice to help make your application stand out and ensure your resume gets noticed and read. Keep in mind that this article will focus on resume tips for an industry job application. If you’re more interested in applying for a PhD or academic jobs, check out our PhD application infographic or academic cover letter examples. You may also be interested in professional cover letters, or even highlighting your study abroad experience to your future employers. Now on with the tips! Formatting, formatting, formatting Realistically, the most important part of your resume is the formatting. That’s because the majority of recruiters and hiring managers will take only 6-7 seconds to “read” your resume (according to Indeed)! Applications submitted to job postings number in the hundreds on average (according to Zippia), and can be much higher. This incentivizes recruiters to spend as little time as possible skimming their massive stack of resumes to pick out potential leads. Although AI-assisted algorithms are increasingly being used to pick out the best applications for hiring managers, you need to ensure that your resume is formatted well so that when it is seen by a human, it isn’t tossed out immediately. So what makes for good formatting? Important information in bold (your name, job titles you’ve held, section headings, etc.) Use a clear, professional font, and use the same font throughout the entire document (like Arial, Cambria, or Times New Roman, etc.) Font size no smaller than 11pt Consistent margins, spacing, and font size Very little color; black-and-white should be sufficient Prioritizes readability and logical flow over creative design Clearly labeled, skimmable sections for Education and Professional Experience, and possibly Skills Limit your resume to one page only; if you’re running out of space, consider cutting experiences that are older or less relevant to the job Design and structure In general, a simple structure is better than a complicated one. Your resume should be easy to read and does not need to be creative to succeed in the economics job market; rather, it must be relevant and informative first. A header section towards the top with your name, contact information, and current location is a good start. Job seekers usually put their name in slightly larger text than the rest, so that it stands out and is easy to find among a stack of resumes. Keep in mind, too, that recruiters often read resumes using an “upside down L” shape; they’ll skim the top few lines and the left-hand side of the page, looking for key words and phrases. Only the absolutely most interesting resumes will get more attention than this. So, you should do your best to make sure the important keywords are to the left side of the page. Below are some further tips for the body of your economics resume: Don’t pack your resume to the brim, keep it concise and informative Consider using bullet points instead of paragraphs; avoid large blocks of text! Highlight your achievements as concisely as possible Emphasize experience that matches the job, and use keywords found in the job post Use numbers to quantify your successes if you can (i.e., reduced department overhead by 20%) Present information in reverse chronological order; your most recent experience should go first (unless you have earlier experience that is particularly relevant for the job) Double and triple-check your resume to correct any spelling or grammar errors Plenty of good, professional examples can be found online using a quick search. We recommend finding an example you like and making something that looks similar. Be specific Aside from common themes like communication skills, flexibility, and the ability to stick to deadlines, there will be economics-specific skills that employers mention in the job postings. In your resume, specificity will set you apart, and show that you’re qualified. When describing your experiences, avoid generic phrasing such as “analyzed voting patterns” or “researched fluctuations in international trade”. It’s much better to include specifics, for example “analyzed voting patterns using logit regressions” or “With a gravity model, described fluctuations in international trade”. This gives the employer a much clearer impression of your skills, showing that you have the specific economics knowledge to succeed in the role. Further, even if the employer has no need for those exact skills, being specific like this proves that you’re capable of learning and applying various quantitative (or qualitative) methods to a task. In fact, many economists opt to include a short “Skills” section that lists specific quantitative techniques and software skills. For recent graduates, a “Relevant Coursework” section is also acceptable and fulfills a similar purpose. But be careful – it’s not recommended to highlight prior coursework for too long after you graduate. If you’ve been out of university for more than 2-3 years, consider trimming down or cutting this section entirely and focusing only on your experience. Be concise When drafting your resume, you’ll need to be brief, often painfully so. Aim to describe only the most important points about your experiences (using specific language!). And, share these using the shortest sentences possible. For example, suppose you contributed to a research study that studied the link between capital accumulation and income inequality using historical data. The research aimed to prove that increasing capital accumulation would drive inequality by concentrating income in the hands of the few, who would then continue to accumulate capital – and wealth – at increasing rates. To do this, you used historical datasets from countries formerly occupied by the U.S.S.R. This involved months of work to find, clean, and use historical datasets from several different countries. With your research partners, you decided to use a two-way linear fixed effects regression model, tested for heteroskedasticity, ensured the residuals were approximately normal, justified your usage of certain control variables and proxies, and more. After months, you emerged from your trials, with a hypothesis definitively proved. Success! How should you summarize such a mighty task on your resume? Here’s a good example: Studied capital accumulation’s effect on inequality via two-way fixed effects regression using the methodology found in Bartels et. al. (2024)1. It’s challenging to summarize months of your life’s best work in a single sentence, but on a resume this is necessary. If you find that it’s not hard, chances are you need to make it even shorter! So how do you decide what to emphasize? A great question, answered by the next point… Go back and re-read the job description A job description is a gold mine of information. The description will describe the nature of the work and the skills the employer is looking for. You should add or re-write details to your resume to (truthfully) match as many of these as possible. If you’re applying for an industry position that requires economic research, for example, you should highlight the research experience you have as well as your thesis topic, especially if it is relevant. Or, if the job posting mentions the importance of presenting to company leadership, highlight your presentation experience at previous jobs, or in conferences or other roles. In short, look for specific quantitative or qualitative methods, responsibilities, topic areas, and software programs (like R, Stata, SQL, etc.) that are mentioned in the post. Then, include a bullet point to show your experience with each of these topics. It’s best to include these naturally as bullet points under the experiences where you used those skills, and how you used them (even if you also make a separate “Skills” section on your resume). Finally: Don’t Give Up! Looking for a job can be a difficult and discouraging process. But, don’t give up! With these tips and your economics degree in hand, you’ll be well on your way to a successful application. Remember, it only takes one successful application to land yourself an economics job, and economists are in high demand. Aside from polishing your resume, we also recommend networking to help you find a job. A business is much more likely to consider a candidate seriously if an employee knows them already. And, your network might be able to help you improve your resume, too, if you ask the right people. Just be sure to treat them to coffee or send them a thank-you to show your gratitude. Don’t forget, too, that you can always patch up holes in your economics skill set and strengthen your resume by taking professional training courses, summer school classes, or even deciding if doing a PhD is the right way to go for you. Whatever your choices, we wish you the best of luck and imminent success! References 1: Bartels, C., Kersting, F. and Wolf, N. (2024): "Testing Marx. Capital Accumulation, Income Inequality, and Socialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany", Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming), CEPR Discussion Paper 17925. Header image credit: Drazen Zigic on Freepik.com / Magnific (free license).
Completing an economics degree course is hard enough. But after you’ve earned your degree, you may very well begin to look for a job in economics, which is a whole new type of challenge!
After high school, you got the economics degree. At great emotional and financial cost, you got it. Three years of diligent work, complete. Never to be repeated, either; your liver feels permanently weakened, you continually explain to people that your degree had nothing to do with the stock market, and you’ll never hear the word “incentive” quite the same way. You then finished the internship. Though it was lengthy, unpaid, and involved minimal compensation, it was likely worthwhile because everyone strongly encouraged you to do it, and you complied. It served one important purpose at least. Brought up-to-date, with the font size adjusted to 24, your CV finally ran to a full page of A4, now ready for new job opportunities. Emboldened, you began the job search. 14 months later, self-esteem long gone, your persistence paid off, the application process, the long-awaited interview, vindication. You remained calm under pressure, outperformed tough competitors through four rounds of interview questions, and impressed your hiring managers with your commitment to working weekends. Contract signed, you now sit at the computer, nervously, waiting for adulthood to begin in this first step into the working world. <11an>limit:3;categories:Postdoc;disciplines:Economics</11an> Now, don’t get fired! And the nerves are there for a reason. Work is no walk in the park. Indeed, resting on your laurels now would be unwise. The 9-to-5 can be a cruel master, ruling with an iron fist, and is particularly prone to nepotism and other office politics. To survive its tumult and built-in bias, one must be smart, savvy and alert - things they don't teach at college, yet things you’ll need asap. Complacency on any of these fronts and, well, expect disappointing results. But let’s remain positive! You can prepare. Follow these tips to reduce the risk of floundering and increase your chances of experiencing success. Together, they make up the INOMICS guide to surviving your first entry level job. Get to know the office culture, quickly An appreciation of office culture will be critical to your longevity. As a general rule you should respect it (unless, of course, it’s toxic), particularly at the start. That includes the parts that seem silly, too. For inevitably - and this is fine - there will be aspects of it you don't like. Wearing a tie in 35 degree heat, for instance, is gross, and there’s nothing professional about sweaty, red faces. But as a newbie in an entry level position, save the protest and keep your neck below the parapet. Try to gauge the work culture before you go about dismantling it (great advice to remember when you are inevitably promoted to a manager position, too!). It developed in your absence and will reflect both the history and values of the company, which, unsurprisingly, many will hold dear. Don’t go about offending on day one. And not offending should be easy, you’re a considerate person after all. But presumably you’ll have loftier aspirations; you’ll want to impress. One of the best ways to do so - besides routinely leaving cookies in the staff kitchen, which can be expensive - is to ask questions. Not to just anyone, though. Find a sympathetic colleague, someone with years of experience within the company, and get the office low down. Do people leave as the clock strikes 5? Are hour-long lunch breaks standard, or looked down upon? Does the boss have any unusual quirks you may need to tip-toe around? And how formal is office etiquette? Not only will getting a grip of these practices help you settle, it will move you out of the firing line and push you towards your dream job. And certainly, if you can afford it, don't forget to bring cookies. Bribery works. Signpost your humility and willingness to learn It may sound desperately obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people fail at their first job for not showing enough eagerness to learn. Don’t be one of them. Learn from your mistakes quickly, ideally while remaining dignified. And be open about what you don’t yet understand. Asking for instruction when unsure on something is preferable to charging ahead, effectively blind, and hoping for the best. The results of this wrecking-ball approach are time-consuming, discomfiting and potentially even job-losing. Avoid it. In fact, you ought to consider surveying your workload and your colleagues in your first few weeks. What skills do others have that you might need, or be expected to learn? What parts of your job make you feel the least qualified? Especially in economics, it pays to review areas of study that you may need more intensely in the office than in school, or topics that you might be unfamiliar with but need in this role. Companies often hire economists for their proven ability to learn and analyze data, not just their expertise in labor movements across borders (for instance). Bosses also admire humility in their employees. Its practice facilitates honest, efficient communication, and demonstrates both maturity and confidence. Remember, you’re only entry-level. No one is expecting perfection, so there’s no need to pretend you offer it. Be cool with what you do know. It did, after all, get you hired. However, keep in mind that excessive humility is to be avoided. You don’t want your colleagues to think you’re incapable. Be honest when you’re in over your head and ask for help; gracefully accept the praises given to you, and earnestly consider the feedback (positive and negative) you receive. Now to the signposting. A practical way of doing this is establishing an open dialogue with your superiors. Not all companies will automatically schedule performance reviews, and oftentimes when they do, they’re sporadic. Not so helpful for a newb. If this is your experience, be proactive (signposting in action) and request one. It doesn't need to be too formal. It is just a way to check your progress and identify areas for improvement. Consider bringing specific topics or questions for feedback, to tighten the scope of such meetings. Also, a bit of one-on-one time with your seniors is always handy for making - or hopefully consolidating - a good first impression and to build relationships. Be sensible, though: sycophancy is an unattractive trait. Limit any excessive flattery, customize it to suit your boss's ego in a subtle way. Over stretching is bad And easily done. It's normal to want to make promises to everyone, especially in the first few weeks when you may still be nervous. We all know the desperate desire to impress, to be seen as competent, independent, and unfazed. Abstractly these inclinations are positive, they show you to be a well-intentioned person, willing to pull your weight, and more. So on that front, well done. However, you must have them under control. Unfettered enthusiasm can get you into all kinds of trouble. Don't make big promises you can't keep. It can upset important people who have control over your job and could fire you. Ward against this. It’s fine to say no to doing yet another ‘favor’, and sometimes necessary. As the famous saying goes: it’s better to do one thing well than three things catastrophically. Don’t undersell yourself, just be realistic with what you can manage. If you’re nervous about refusing a favor outright, consider asking if it can be delayed, and mention that your work time is dedicated to other important, time-sensitive projects. Don't be afraid to take the initiative While keeping the above in mind, you should take the initiative. And if possible, try and do so when people - the more senior the better - are watching: make it visible. This will make you look accomplished, show leadership, and when promotions are in the offing, help you stand out. Taking initiative can be achieved in a number of ways. The most obvious is doing more than is expected of you. At the beginning, your task will be clearly defined and not too difficult. Try to do more than expected, but be careful not to do too much as advised above. This does not mean taking out the bins, although that’s a nice gesture and a chore many avoid. It means sharing your ideas, skill sets and expertise in topics you are interested in, even if no one has requested them. It also means thinking critically about the tasks you’ve been handed, and trying to find new, innovative ways to accomplish them. Modern institutions know well the need to innovate to stay relevant. Try to become part of this innovation. For if you do, you’ll find your career path, safe from the next round of cuts. Final words Okay, back to you, sitting there at your computer, tense. You can take a breath, we’ve covered the basics. It is now for you to remember them. Print them out, recite them and make sure you follow them. The imposter syndrome will subside if you do; and what a feeling that would be. Seriously though, things, in all likelihood, will be fine. With a good attitude and the ability you (surely) have, it won't be long before you gain the confidence to look away from your computer screen to the room and colleagues around you. In that beautiful moment you’ll realize you deserve the position you’re in. You’ve worked hard, and in reality, you are ready for this job. You may also notice that actually most of your work is pretty well received. You feel a bit less stressed, and you’re even getting invited to after work drinks now and again. The bliss... Now, to ask for a pay raise. Image Credit: fizkes / Shutterstock (Licensed Image - Copyright)
It’s your first day at work and you’re nervous, naturally. You decide to quickly remember the journey that brought you to the computer screen you are now looking at. Many INOMICS readers will relate to this journey.
Is an Economics PhD Worth It? The PhD Pay Premium
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the typical PhD in economics earns more than the typical economist with “only” a Master’s degree. But how much more? Is doing an economics PhD program worth it in the long term? <11an>limit:3;categories:PhD Programs;disciplines:Economics</11an> The short answer: yes. INOMICS Salary Report data shows that in 2023, economics PhDs earned on average 96% more than economists with a Master’s degree. These are worldwide statistics taken from the full breadth of the INOMICS Salary Survey data. The benefit to doing a PhD in economics varies by region. Figure 1 compares the “earnings premium” that an economics PhD has over economists with a Master’s degree across the world, using 2023 INOMICS Salary Survey data. Figure 1: Regional Premiums in economics PhD pay compared to a Master’s Clearly, in most regions acquiring a PhD in economics offers quite the premium. Some results may stand out as surprising, however. First, in North America in particular, the premium for earning a PhD in economics seems smaller than expected. If a PhD only earns an economist an extra 36% increase in wages, ignoring a PhD and continuing to work might seem like a preferred option in this high-wage region. In the Caribbean, South & Central America and Africa, PhD earnings are below Master’s earnings. This unexpected result appears to be the case due to the distribution of survey respondents. In both regions, the amount of industry economist respondents is much larger than academic respondents, and Master’s-degree-holding economists outnumber PhD economists in Government, Central & International Bank, and private business roles. These three categories of employer tend to pay more highly than others. This suggests that in these two regions, acquiring a PhD may not be necessary to have a well-compensated industry career. Further, it seems more realistic for Master’s-degree-holding economists to attain high-paying roles in these sectors without a PhD, as opposed to many other regions where a PhD would be considered a requirement. As the previous discussion just showed, Figure 1 doesn’t account for the different sectors that economists work in. In general, economists who work in industry tend to earn very high wages, while economists who work in academia earn noticeably less until they are finally promoted to a full Professor of Economics. Then, academic economist pay catches up to industry pay. This is a trend noted in multiple editions of the INOMICS Salary Report. This is particularly true in North America, the highest-paying region on average. Economists working in industry can earn high wages with only a Master’s degree. This is also true of Western Europe & Scandinavia and East Asia & Australasia, the second and third highest-paying regions identified by the Report. Some other regions of the world feature much more of a premium for PhD economists. Part of the reason for this is clear. Since high-paying regions like Western Europe and Australasia pay higher salaries to begin with due to the higher cost of living, a high pay increase in these regions represents a lower percentage of overall pay. This fact is supported by the graph; North America is the highest-paying region and features the lowest positive percentage increase in pay for PhDs. Western Europe, which pays the second most on average, features a slightly higher percentage increase. Readers should make no mistake; a 35.6% increase from a base salary of $100,833 (the average Master’s degree economist salary in North America) is a massive increase in pay. Comparably, the almost 120% increase in pay in the Middle East, Central Asia & North Africa region is an increase from an average Master’s degree salary of $17,321 to almost $40,000. In percentage terms, this is obviously enormous, but in cash terms less than the difference in North America. Additionally, however, the high percentage premium for PhD economists in lower-paying regions may suggest that in these regions (i.e., South Asia, Middle East) there are more opportunities for economists without a PhD to find meaningful employment, so fewer individuals elect to study for a PhD. If this is true, those who do complete a PhD enjoy a high pay premium over their economist peers since economics PhDs are more rare in those regions. Academic economists need a PhD Economics students should keep in mind that academic jobs will almost certainly require a PhD in economics. Economics students interested in a career in academia should therefore be strongly encouraged to pursue an economics PhD, regardless of differences in pay. The following Figure 2 shows the pay premium for economists employed at universities, by region: Figure 2: Regional Premiums in economics PhD pay compared to a Master’s (Academic only) The pay premiums for economics PhDs tells the story quite clearly: across the board, in every world region, economics PhDs in academia earn much more than their counterparts without a PhD. Readers might note that this graph is likely skewed because economics PhDs are probably more senior economists than economists without a PhD in academic settings, and likely hold higher-level positions; but this skewness supports the point. Economists interested in a serious career in academia must strongly consider getting a PhD, or have a specific reason to not need one. It is very difficult to earn a Professor of Economics position without a PhD in most of the world. Figure 3 below provides evidence to support this point. Figure 3: % of Master’s degree economists in Professor roles by region Figure 3 shows very clearly that burgeoning economists should expect to earn a PhD if they wish to work as a Professor of Economics in the future. Every world region has very few Professors with just a Master’s degree. Even in South Asia, which has by far the largest representation for Professors with a Master’s degree in our data, only 20% of Professors have a Master’s while 80% have a PhD. Industry economist roles It’s clear that academic economists usually need a PhD, but this isn’t necessarily the case in industry. However, readers may be curious to repeat the above breakdowns in industry roles, which can be instructive. Figure 4 thus shows the pay premium for PhD economists in industry roles by region: Figure 4: Regional Premiums in economics PhD pay compared to a Master’s (Industry only) Figure 4 shows that PhD economists out-earn Master’s-holding economists in industry jobs by a substantial amount in most regions. The lower industry PhD economist pay compared to Master’s degree economists was already discussed above for Africa and the Caribbean. In summary, Master’s degree holding economists outnumber PhD economists in Government, Central & International Bank, and private business roles in these two regions. Since these three categories of employer tend to pay more highly than others, it may slightly skew the graph in favor of Master’s degree holders. However, this suggests that in these two regions, acquiring a PhD may not be necessary to have a well-compensated industry career. In North America, part of the reason for a lower than expected premium is likely the fact that in this high-paying region, high base salaries mean that salary increases will be lower percentage-wise. This was discussed above as well. Average years of experience are quite comparable for industry economists in North America (about 12 for Master’s degree holders and 15 for PhD holders), and the employer distribution is relatively balanced. Figure 4 suggests that industry economists with a Master’s degree in North America ought to consider their career path and whether a PhD is right for them before going back to school. A PhD opens up some employment opportunities in the private sector that aren’t available to Master’s degree holders, and will increase pay, but whether or not that is necessary or desired is likely up to the individual. Keep in mind that specific non-academic employers – especially governments, central banks like the Federal Reserve, institutions seeking economics researchers, NGOs like the World Bank, and even increasingly consulting firms – are likely to require an econ PhD for some higher-level positions. Be sure to check job listings for economics jobs that you’re interested in to see if a PhD might help you reach them in your career. Comparing previous years: PhD earnings on the rise again Using past years of INOMICS survey data, we can examine how the benefit to doing an economics PhD has changed over time. It appears that the premium in pay that economics PhDs enjoy is recovering after a slight dip during the pandemic years. See below Figure 5 below: Figure 5: How much more PhD economists earn vs. Master’s economists by year, INOMICS data Figure 5 shows that earnings for economics PhDs are once again rising relative to pay for economists without a PhD. It’s worth noting that pay for economists with both degree types has increased this year. According to the latest INOMICS Salary Report, economists with a Master’s as their highest degree experienced a 3.2% increase in pay on average since 2022, while those with a PhD have experienced a 35.9% increase. This has widened the earnings premium between the two categories from 80% in 2022 to 91% in 2023. The dip in pay that economists experienced in 2022 may be partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And PhD pay is not the only factor that appears to be improving since COVID. The post-pandemic recovery of the economics jobs market has already been discussed by INOMICS, showing that earnings for economists with Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees recovered sharply after the first waves of the pandemic. So, is doing a PhD in economics right for you? According to the data, in most cases it will be. However, you must weigh the tradeoffs yourself. You may not need a PhD to have a fulfilling career in economics, particularly if you plan to work in a non-governmental and non-central bank role in industry, and particularly in certain countries and regions. Header image credit: Freepik /Magnific
Economics students may often wonder if doing a PhD is the right move for them. After all, you can still get a good job in economics with just a Master’s degree. We’ve covered different angles of this topic before with helpful advice about what degree you’ll need as an economist, asking whether you should do a PhD, and even asking what kinds of economists are paid the most. Thanks to INOMICS Salary Report 2023 data, we can look more closely at the pay benefit for an economics PhD in today’s job market. This will help you decide if doing an economics PhD will be worth it for your own career.
Professional Trainings as a Means of Increasing Your Employability
Naturally then, you might wonder how you can further your skills beyond just graduating with your latest degree. Or, you may have encountered situations or job opportunities where you wish you’d had more time to study a particular topic. Professional development courses or skills training are one great method to do so. What is a professional skills training for economists? Professional trainings for economists may be offered by a university or by other organizations, including private companies. Usually for a modest tuition fee, you can take a class that lasts anywhere from a single day to a few weeks. Some of these economics trainings are only offered in person and on-site, but many course providers are increasingly offering online courses so that anyone around the world can join in. These trainings are usually focused around a particular topic, and are designed to give either an introduction to a specific area of economics (for example, macroeconomic forecasting), a useful tool for economists (such as R or Python), or a related field (like data science). Because these courses are designed to help economists advance their skills, some knowledge of economics is usually required. Many courses require participants to already have an advanced degree in economics, or some related field. This is important as the learning environment can be fast-paced, offering an introduction or advanced training in a complicated topic in as little as one week. Common topic areas for trainings There are a number of areas in which economists (particularly fresh Master’s or PhD graduates) can further hone their skillset through these types of opportunities. The following are a few major areas you may consider taking a training course in after your degree: Advanced micro- or macroeconomics: Although every economics degree comes with introductory and advanced micro- and macroeconomics coursework, it’s easy to forget much of this knowledge once you pick a major or specialization within your degree. Advanced microeconomic or macroeconomic courses help reinforce the fundamentals of economics, or can even inspire your research by reminding you how macroeconomists (for example) tackle some problems that you and your microeconomics-focused colleagues don’t think about as often. But it’s not just for refreshing: some of these courses can delve deep into newly emerging research methods, or explain niche economic models that semester courses don’t have time to introduce. Econometrics and statistics: This is an important area containing many critical skills for economists. Additional coursework in econometrics or statistics can be massively helpful in your career and improve your career opportunities, since every economist benefits from a deeper understanding of the models, methods, and theories that power economic thought. Consider taking professional training courses in econometric methods to sharpen your skills. This can include topics on statistics, time series analysis, managing panel data, niche regression models (or advanced, like gravity models), etc. Software tools: R, Stata, Python, SAS, SPSS, Eviews and dozens more: the statistical software tool options for economists are as myriad as they are complex. It’s likely that as an economist, you will need to learn at least one of these tools well in order to conduct data analysis. Multiple proficiencies will be a plus as different employers or universities may utilize different tools. Professional training courses that help you become more savvy with one or more of these tools can therefore improve the quality of your work and potentially save you thousands of hours of troubleshooting over the course of your career. Data Science topics: Economists will find many topics in data science interesting and helpful for their research, and more widely for their career. Courses in data science can help economists work more effectively and conscientiously with large datasets. Further, these courses can also help prepare economists for the cutting-edge technology and research methods that will impact how economics is researched in the future. For example, economists and data scientists are already using machine learning algorithms to forecast, and may increasingly be using large-language models (LLMs) to analyze economic data. Other elements of data science (such as bootstrapping and decision tree models) have already made their way into the field, so it can be helpful to become familiar with them. Broadening your horizons: Did you finish an economics degree, and wish you had time to take more courses? Maybe you did your Master’s of Economics and specialized in quantitative macroeconomics, but wish you had time to take that cool class on energy economics. Professional training courses are a great way to do just that. Specific areas of focus like behavioral economics, accounting, applied economics, or real estate can all provide helpful knowledge and context for economists who work in related fields. Interested in some opportunities? Check out further professional training listings on our website. Header image credit: Rawpixel.com via Shutterstock (licensed image - copyright)
Economics is a massive field with many sub-disciplines, and it’s impossible to master the whole lot of it from just one Master’s degree or even a PhD.
Insights into Central Banking Careers with Dr. Gómez-Pineda
This includes advice about which skills aspiring economists should learn, the differences between research and policy economists, topics that prospective central bankers should focus on in their studies, and more. Any serious student of economics – and indeed, many curious economists – will benefit from hearing Dr. Gómez-Pineda’s advice. Javier G. Gómez Pineda is Senior Economist (Investigador Principal) at Banco de la República (the central bank of Colombia). He also teaches Monetary Economics at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. His research interests are in Monetary Economics and International Economics; he is author of the textbook Dinero, banca y mercados emergentes, los países emergentes en la economía global, 2010, Ed. Alfaomega; and he holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. Are you an economist already working in the field? You, like Dr. Gómez-Pineda, have a chance to assist INOMICS’ economist job market research. Simply fill out our anonymous, 3-5 minute Salary Survey and help us research the state of the economics job market in 2023. Without further ado, read on for the interview! Sean McClung: How did you become an economist – was it always your plan? Javier G. Gómez-Pineda: Choosing a career can be challenging. In the beginning I was not very sure about my career choice, I considered at least two alternatives, but in the end I decided to study economics. I think what ultimately led me to this choice was perhaps the idea that what is important in choosing a career is not how you earn an income, but how you will spend the rest of your life in a way that contributes and serves others. Later, you discover that in order to serve others, you need to know how to be useful, to have a good command of your field, your techniques and your work. At the end of my undergraduate studies, I worked as a research assistant (RA) for Professor Lauchlin Currie. It was he who encouraged me: “if you want to be a good economist, you have to study abroad.” At that time, there were no graduate programs in Colombia, but there were scholarships for graduate studies abroad, provided that the studies were made at a top university. These Central Bank scholarships were named after Professor Lauchlin Currie. My main challenge was the English language; not so much the reading, because I had studied English reading in my undergraduate studies; but more the listening and writing. So, I did some English work before I applied to graduate school. I studied American English at an institute and learned some grammar. At the same time, I studied British English at another institute and learned some conversation skills. I also traveled to the United States for a short time to study English and to expand my vocabulary a little. In the end, I passed the English exam and got a place on a graduate program. However, at the beginning of my first year of graduate studies, I struggled with listening comprehension. By the middle of the first year, it was not the language that was the problem, but the math. I overcame the “math scare” by putting more emphasis on economic intuition. I think in the process I managed to learn some English, get over the math scare, and study abroad, but I still strive to become a better economist and write more in English. SM: What part of your educational background would you say is most valuable to your current work? JGP: I think a valuable part was my thesis work during my graduate studies; this was due to my empirical thesis. It was this work that got me into running regressions. Since then, I have done more empirical work than theoretical work. I think another part of the training that I found valuable was the macro problem sets. In one or two of them, I had to learn how to run macro models on the computer as well as get familiar with some of the software packages. Of course, the most valuable part of the educational background were the courses themselves, especially in macroeconomics, international economics and econometrics. However, education does not stop when you graduate. Theory evolves, better techniques become available, new software packages are developed. As research economists, our job is to contribute to these developments, and so we must continue to educate ourselves by at least reading the most relevant authors in our field and attending conferences. As policy economists, our job is to incorporate these developments into our analysis so that our work is based on the most appropriate methods. SM: How has your day-to-day as a central banker been different than you expected (if at all)? JGP: I expected that my work would involve running regressions, as I had done in my thesis work, and that turned out to be true. In contrast, I did not expect that my work would involve DSGE models, Kalman filtering, and Bayesian estimation, which I had learned in the university, but that turned out to be part of my work. SM: What is/are the most rewarding part(s) of the job for you? JGP: The contribution of an economist is sometimes less tangible than that of other professions. Unlike economists, a doctor can have a big impact on a person’s life in a very concrete way, and the medical profession can contribute to the health of the people in a country or even in the world. I think the work of a macroeconomist should have a small impact on the country while the economics profession should have an impact on the economic well-being of the people in the country. For me, the most rewarding part of the job has been to see that the inflation model is used by the Central Bank as an input in the interest rate policy decision, to know that our monetary policy report is valued by the interest-rate-setting committee, and to see that our policy working papers are used as a reference point for understanding monetary and macroprudential policy in Colombia. At the end of the day the expectation is that this work will hopefully have some impact in the country. It is also rewarding to be able to share this knowledge with students at the university. SM: As a central banker, do you get to research? What is your favorite part of that research? How is it different from academic research? JGP: Central banks typically have two types of economists: research economists and policy economists. Research economists write papers that are published as central bank working papers and in academic journals. Policy economists work on the periodic inflation forecasts, the Inflation Report (IR); and the periodic financial stability assessments, the Financial Stability Report (FSR). The IR supports interest rate policy decisions and the FSR supports macroprudential policy decisions. I work about 80 percent of the time as a research economist and 20 percent as a policy economist. Since I work on monetary economics in both roles, my work as a research economist and as a policy economist overlap. In Colombia, the central bank has a committee of research economists that prepares a quarterly monetary policy note to the central bank’s interest-rate-setting committee. I am a member of this three-person research economists committee, and this work represents about 20 percent of my work as a policy economist. The time devoted to research may vary across economists. For instance, in Colombia the central bank has research economists that devote 100 percent of their time to research. Conversely, some policy economists do not have time left for research and some might work about 20 percent of the time as research economists. They publish this research as technical notes in the IR and FSR, as working papers and sometimes in journals. Academic research covers a wide range of topics, while central bank research tends to focus on monetary and financial stability. Academic research tends to produce sophisticated analytical and algebraic results; however, at times the quantitative dimension of academic research is not as sophisticated as that sought for by central bank economists. Academic research tends to emphasize the sign and significance of estimated coefficients, while central bank research tends to emphasize the quantitative performance of the models, issues such as the impact of interest rate decisions on inflation over time, in exact percentage points, also quantifying the amount of uncertainty involved in the transmission. While there are differences between academic and central bank research, there are also similarities. Both academic and central bank research share the current paradigm of the New Neoclassical Synthesis, see Goodfriend and King (1997) and Woodford (2009). Some academic economists sometimes hold policy positions in central banks, and some central bank economists also teach at the university. SM: In your experience, what would you say is the best type of experience for prospective central bank hires to have? JGP: For me, a sufficient condition is a strong interest and vocation in monetary economics or macroeconomics. A thesis in monetary economics or in international economics is a clear sign of this interest. Beyond the thesis, a working paper or article in monetary economics is also a good signal. Other skills are very welcome, but not strictly necessary, as they can be acquired on the job. These include familiarity with software packages such as R, Python and Matlab and a good command of the English language. SM: What other tips, advice, or insights do you have for younger economists interested in monetary policy or central banking? JGP: My advice would be: read the literature and get into the habit of reading the papers. In addition, keep in mind that what you sow is what you shall reap, so read the literature and also get familiar with the software packages used to build your estimations and models; get those skills. Finally, for those who are not native English speakers, it is important to learn how to write papers. There are several books and articles available on this subject. One starting point is McClosky (2000) and also Banco Central de Chile (2017). It is a good idea to go through this literature and try to learn how to write papers. If possible, get help from an English editor at your institution or on your own. SM: What else (if anything) do you think should be shared about your career path or current role? JGP: Central banks face issues that are common to the central banking community as a whole. So try to make your research relevant not only to your central bank, but if possible to the central banking community; if possible, work with a global approach. And finally, group research is better than individual research. So, it is important to work in groups and write papers with others. References Banco Central de Chile, “Guía de Estilo en Inglés” (Accessed Sep. 19, 2023), 2017. Goodfriend, Marvin, and King Robert. “The new neoclassical synthesis and the role of monetary policy.” NBER Macroeconomics Annual 12 (1997): 231-283. McClosly, Deidre, Economical Writing, 2nd Ed. Waveland Press Inc, 2000. Woodford, Michael. “Convergence in macroeconomics: Elements of the new synthesis.” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 1, nº 1 (2009): 267-279. Header image credit: Dr. Javier G. Gómez-Pineda.
Dr. Javier G. Gómez-Pineda, our interview guest for the 2023 INOMICS Handbook, graciously agreed to return for a second interview. This time, the INOMICS team prepared some career-related questions for the central banker. With his answers, Dr. Gómez-Pineda shares his wisdom about central banking and economist careers in general with you, our readers.
Which economists are paid the most, and where?
Around the world, economists are paid well compared to other occupations. This may not be a surprise, but how much economists are paid, how different employers compare in terms of pay, and other factors (such as “is an economics PhD worth the pay increase?”) may be less clear to burgeoning economists. This article will shed some light on these questions and more using our data from the 2022 INOMICS Salary Report. Read on to learn more about which employers pay economists the most, regional differences in economist salaries, and more. This article will discuss both academic and non-academic (or “industry”) economists. If you’re curious about the differences between these two general types of economists, you should read our article written by an economist who has worked in both spheres, “Policy or academic economist: which should I become?”. Regardless of an economists’ chosen path, how much can one expect to earn, and which economists earn the most? An Overview of Economist Salaries Globally As mentioned above, many organizations value the specialized skills that economists bring to the table. The below graph constructed from our 2022 Salary Report data shows how average economist pay varies by these different types of employer around the world: Figure 1: Regional average salaries by employer type (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) Figure 1 shows average economist salaries by each type of employer in different regions around the world (note that a handful of series are excluded due to sample size issues, i.e. NGO in East Asia & Australasia). Two things stand out from this figure. First, average pay in North America is very high, while average pay in Western Europe & Scandinavia and East Asia & Australasia are the next highest on average. The other regions of the world are more comparable with each other (we will explore each region individually later on in the article). Second, central banks appear to pay economists the most on average. Readers might be interested in the very high central bank salaries in East Asia & Australasia; the entire sample of central bank economists from the region in our survey are located in Hong Kong, which is a high-paying city in its part of the world. Private businesses and governments also pay quite well in general, with the exception that government pay in North America appears to be lower than other options there. Meanwhile, research institutions and NGOs appear to pay the least, though the difference is not stark. While this graph is interesting, one important detail is left out that can skew the results. More educated economists are paid more highly, so the proportion of PhD-holding economists in each role should be accounted for as well to get an even more accurate picture of economist pay. Salary Breakdown by Type of Employer and Level of Education Some employers, like central banks, are more likely to require an economics PhD. Thus, on average these employers offer higher salaries for their highly educated workforce. On this basis, it is useful to differentiate between the level of education when comparing salaries offered by different types of employers. This breakdown can be seen for each region in the following Figures 2 – 9. Note that our survey data lacks a sufficient sample size of Bachelor’s degree respondents to subdivide Bachelor’s economists by employer type. This is partially because most economists attain at least a Master’s degree; it is rare, though not impossible, for an economist to develop their career with only a Bachelor’s degree. These salaries are presented in thousands of USD, and were converted using purchasing power parity data taken from the World Bank1 (PPP conversion accurate as of January 20, 2023). Figure 2: Average salary by position and degree in North America (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) In North America, a PhD in economics has a clear payoff in terms of salary, especially for university and private business positions. Government, NGO, and research institution roles pay less of a premium for PhDs, but even these still pay roughly 35-40% higher salaries to PhDs than for Master’s degree holders. The lowest pay gap is at central banks, but these institutions tend to hire only accomplished economists with many years of experience. Getting a job at a central bank with only a Master’s degree likely requires extensive years of experience that early-career economists don’t have. Figure 3: Average salary by position and degree in Western Europe and Scandinavia (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) In Western Europe and Scandinavia, a PhD in economics also has a clear payoff in terms of salary for university, research institution, and private business positions. However, other roles feature less pronounced differences. Economists who wish to work in government or in an NGO in Western Europe ought to examine the local conditions and the payoff of a PhD in their country and subdiscipline to assess if it’s worth it. Central banks also do not appear to pay a premium for PhD economists in this region, but again these institutions tend to hire economists with many years of experience, so getting a job at one with only a Master’s degree as an early-career economist might be difficult. Figure 4: Average salary by position and degree in East Asia & Australasia (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) In East Asia and Australasia, economists with a PhD enjoy a significant pay increase in university, research institution, and private business positions. Central banks once again pay the most for economists in this region, though no central bankers with a Master’s degree responded to the survey in this region, perhaps suggesting that central banks are less likely to hire economists without a PhD in East Asian / Australasian countries. In this region, a PhD appears to be well worth the investment of time and effort. NGO or charity and government roles are not included due to small sample size. Figure 5: Average salary by position and degree in Central, Southern & Eastern Europe (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) In Central, Southern and Eastern Europe, starting a career as an economist with only a Master’s degree is feasible, but a PhD is an excellent investment in terms of salary. Almost every employer type in this region pays a premium for an economics PhD. An interesting exception are central banks, which actually feature higher average pay for economists with a Master’s degree. Again, it’s important to note that getting a job at a central bank usually requires years of experience and demonstrated expertise; it’s possible that central banks in this region do not emphasize a PhD as strongly as extensive work experience when recruiting economists. NGO and charity roles are excluded due to small sample size. Figure 6: Average salary by position and degree in South Asia (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) In South Asia, universities and private businesses pay a (relative) premium for economists with a PhD. Economists in these roles stand to gain much from pursuing a PhD. Meanwhile, Research institution pay is about equal for economists with a Master’s or a PhD. A large amount of highly-paid, Master’s degree-holding economists in NGO and charity roles work in this region. In fact, the highest paid role in these regions appear to be for those types of economists. This could be due to foreign investment or aid programs, which typically spend money on projects that industry economists – not academic ones – would manage, or other factors. Central bank roles are not reported here due to small sample size. Figure 7: Average salary by position and degree in Caribbean, South & Central America (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) In the Caribbean, South America, and Central America, a PhD in economics appears to be a worthwhile investment. Almost every position pays a premium for an economist with a PhD in this region; those at private businesses and NGOs or charities stand to gain the most from attaining a PhD. One exception is government roles, where economists with a Master’s degree slightly out-earn PhD economists on average. Figure 8: Average salary by position and degree in Middle East, Central Asia & North Africa (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) The Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa is similar to the Caribbean, Central and South America region. Here too, a PhD in economics pays off very well. Every employer except for NGOs pay a premium for an economist with a PhD in this region. The highest earners appear to be PhD economists in universities and in government, alongside Master’s degree holders in NGOs. But, in this region NGO pay is very high. Like with South Asia, it’s possible this is due to foreign aid or investment being sent for projects or investments that are closely related to industry economists’ jobs, which in general may not require as much education as academic economist roles. Figure 9: Average salary by position and degree in Africa (USD, PPP-adjusted, thousands) Africa is a unique region when it comes to economist pay. Pay in government and for private companies follows a similar pattern as other regions, where a PhD in economics grants a sizeable increase in pay. Universities still follow this pattern, though pay at universities in African countries typically appears lower compared to other economist jobs in Africa relative to the rest of the world. Besides this, economists with a Master’s degree earn decent pay in other roles. Unless one wishes to work for the government or a private organization in Africa, a Master’s degree in economics might be sufficient. The most highly paid academic economists out-earn most industry economists It may appear from these graphs that academic economists earn less money than their counterparts in industry. While the value of a PhD is clear in certain cases, like with high private company pay, it might not be clear whether it’s worth it pay-wise to enter academia. However, these averages by employer type mask one important fact: professors of economics earn much more money than non-professor-level economists employed at universities. In fact, professors of economics earn salaries that are comparable to the highest earners in industry. This can be seen below in Figure 10: Figure 10: Average salaries for economist jobs globally (USD, thousands, PPP-adjusted) Figure 10 shows that industry positions pay more than academic positions on average, but economics professor (and to a lesser extent, associate professor) salaries are comparable to high-paying industry positions. Professors of economics on average are only outpaid by executive leadership roles. Thus, new economics PhDs should not be discouraged from entering academia by somewhat lower salaries shown in the regional breakdowns. Although industry economists will out-earn most academics in junior roles, a full professor of economics salary makes up the difference, only out-earned by executive leadership roles. Are you curious to learn more about economist salaries? Help INOMICS analyze even more about the state of pay in economics by answering our anonymous Salary Survey. It only takes a couple of minutes and is available here: https://inomics.com/salary-survey. After answering the survey, you’ll have the option to subscribe for early access to the results, published in the fourth quarter of each year. And if you’re looking to take the next step in your career as an economist, we can help. Check out available courses, jobs, and programs to find the next skill, degree, or job in your path as an economist. No matter your choice of degree or position, economists have much to offer – and their compensation often reflects their valuable skills, and the contributions they make to the economy, and society, around them. The above article first appeared in the INOMICS Handbook 2023, which you can download on our site. Sources: 1: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP. PPP data originally accessed on January 20, 2023. PPP data may have changed since that date. Header image credit: wirestock on Freepik/Magnific (free license)
The following article first appeared in the INOMICS Handbook 2023. Download the INOMICS Handbook
Why are top management consulting firms increasingly hiring Economics PhDs?
Every Economics PhD student has contemplated a career outside academia at least once. There are multiple alternative options available to trained economists, and the INOMICS Salary Report shows that about 30% eventually opt for the private sector (though the true number may be higher, as INOMICS has a high proportion of academic users). In recent years, top consulting firms (such as the “Big 4”: KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, and EY) have increasingly been hiring Economics PhDs, many through specifically designed advanced degree pipelines – a trend that may surprise some. But why are these firms seeking out economists for their consulting teams, and what benefits do economists bring to the table? I spoke with a human resources manager from one of the Big 4 firms to learn more on the matter, and to help thousands of Economics PhDs like myself know our options better. First, it's important to reiterate what an Economics PhD entails to figure out why these students are in demand. Economics is the study of how societies allocate scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants and needs. An Economics PhD program involves advanced coursework in microeconomics (the study of individual decision-making) and macroeconomics (the study of the economy as a whole), as well as training in statistics, econometrics (the application of statistical methods to economic data), and mathematical modeling. PhD students also typically conduct independent research, which requires them to develop analytical skills, conceptual thinking, and the ability to identify patterns and trends in large amounts of data. Management consulting firms are known for their ability to help businesses solve complex problems and achieve their strategic objectives. Therefore, the interview process typically includes several rounds with at least one case interview; this type of on-the-spot analysis isn’t a skill that’s traditionally taught in economics courses. So why are they interested in hiring Economics PhDs? Here are a few key reasons: Strong analytical skills Economics PhDs are trained to analyze data and identify patterns in the economy and society, discovering and testing trends that may not be immediately apparent. They are also skilled in developing hypotheses and testing them using statistical models. Economics PhDs are trained to make sure no assumption is left untested, and no conclusion is reached unproved. This makes them valuable assets to consulting teams, who often work with large amounts of information and data, and need to make sense of it quickly in order to provide actionable insights to clients. Image credit: our-team on Freepik.de Familiarity with economic theory Thanks to their rigorous training, Economics PhDs deeply understand economic theory. It provides them with a framework for understanding how different factors may impact a client’s business on both the microeconomic (individuals and firms) and macroeconomic (industry and economy) levels. This theoretical background can be especially valuable when working with clients in industries that are undergoing significant structural changes or facing new challenges, such as disruptive technology or geopolitical tensions. Someone who studied economics would be able to identify these changes and predict future impact on business. Data science skills PhDs with a degree in Economics gain diverse data science skills in graduate school, including quantitative modeling and data visualization skills. They are trained to solve problems while ensuring that the results generated from statistical models are valid and reliable. Articulating methodology (‘Why should we employ this model?’) and conducting a series of robustness checks (‘Can we trust the results?’) are standard tools used by Economics PhD students when doing economic analysis. These skills can be especially valuable when working with clients who need data-driven insights to make key business decisions. Ability to conduct rigorous research Doctorate programs in economics typically require students to conduct independent research, which takes several years to complete. Economics PhD students design and manage their own research projects (or parts of them) as well as their own personal time and resources to keep the work going. This is a crucial skill for a consultant, as the nature of their job dictates independent work and the ability to multitask between projects. Economics PhD graduates come already prepared for this challenge. Strong communication skills Effective communication is key in consulting work, as consultants need to be able to clearly explain complex concepts and findings to clients who may not have a background in economics. Economics PhDs are often skilled communicators, as they are used to presenting their research to both academic audiences and non-experts during graduate studies. Breadth of knowledge While Economics PhDs are often experts in their particular field, they also have broad knowledge of other areas of economics, and related fields like finance and statistics. This breadth of knowledge can be valuable when working with clients who operate in diverse industries or who face complex challenges that require a multidisciplinary approach. Last but not least, corporate clients like working with smart people, and having a PhD on the team can be a big boost to credibility. Several qualities set consultants with a PhD degree in Economics apart: rigorous field knowledge that Economics PhD students acquire during their training and through their independent research, scientific integrity, global outlook, and a curious mind that is on a constant search for an intellectual challenge. Seeking a consulting job as an Economics PhD Given these benefits, it's not surprising that consulting firms are increasingly seeking out Economics PhDs for their teams. In fact, some firms have even started recruiting directly from PhD programs, offering students the opportunity to transition their economics career from academia to consulting. If you’re coming from an economics PhD program and interested in this type of position, be sure to highlight these skills on your resume. The interview process for consulting positions typically includes several rounds with at least one case interview, where you will be put on the spot to solve one or more hypothetical business challenges. There are numerous books and online resources to help prepare for these specifically. As businesses face increasingly complex challenges, the need for data-driven insights and rigorous analysis will only continue to grow. In that sense, Economics PhDs bring unique skills and expertise to the table. Be sure to fully consider your employment options, and consider whether a consulting firm hiring economics PhDs could be the right place for you. The above article first appeared in the INOMICS Handbook 2023, which you can download on our site. Header image credit: Drazen Zigic on Freepik.de.
Succeeding in the European Job Market for Economists
These institutions include European universities and research institutes in academia, but also many consulting firms, tech companies, think tanks, governments, and government agencies (such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and central banks). The EJME can appear chaotic with applicants and recruiters constantly in a frenzy of interviews, offers, rejections, ambitions, hopes and disappointments. But by coordinating the timing of recruitment activities, there is more opportunity for candidates and institutions to meet each other and to make the most advantageous matches. Finding the right job can be a life-defining moment for individuals, and the performance of institutions depends crucially on the people they employ. Each year, around 1000 candidates and 200 institutions from Europe and beyond join the EJME, devoting enormous amounts of time and energy to get these matches right. The EJME calendar The EJME recruiting season starts in September/October when recruiters advertise their job openings for the next academic year. At the same time, candidates put together their job market ‘packages’ including their CV, research output (usually in the form of a specific job market paper [JMP]), reference letters and, increasingly, a personal website. Candidates apply for (usually many) posts throughout the autumn and, having reviewed their documentation, recruiters invite candidates for first-round interviews. In pre-Covid times, these were face-to-face and took place in a European city, but they have been online over the last couple of years. This will be the case again in 2022. Whether online or face-to-face, the first round of interviews takes place over a few days in mid-December so that there is some coordination in the timing of decisions being made by candidates and recruiters. A typical university department might interview as many as 30-40 candidates in this first round. Around seven or eight of these candidates might then be invited for “fly-outs” where they give seminars in the host institutions, meet with the local faculty in one-to-one conversations and, sometimes, have formal interviews. The fly-outs are nearly always in person and take place between January and March. The final stage of the EJME is often the most stressful. This is when institutions make job offers to their preferred candidate(s) from the fly-outs, while holding others in a ranked reserve list. At this stage, the preferred candidate(s) might already have other job offers in hand and/or might have been invited for a later fly-out elsewhere. Institutions press for an early answer, partly to persuade their first-choice candidate to take their offer and partly so that they can move rapidly to their second-choice candidate if their first choice turns them down. Some institutions are tempted to make “exploding offers” (offers with very short deadlines or deadlines that pre-date the end of scheduled fly-outs) but these create enormous stress on candidates and undermine the purpose of the coordinated market. On the other hand, having devoted considerable time and energy to the EJME process, institutions are faced with the prospect of their reserve list gradually evaporating if their first-choice candidate takes too long negotiating the best deal possible or simply delays making a decision. Relationships between candidates and recruiters can become quite strained at this point and many on both sides of the EJME suffer sleepless nights as bargains are struck and decisions are made. Top tips for EJME candidates Putting your best foot forward. Your job market package should show you in your best light as recruiters are looking at hundreds of candidates. Create a personal webpage that is easy to read and navigate, with links to your CV and JMP, a three-line bio and information on your research interests. Your CV should be easy to read too: take a look at other CVs to get the format right; specify your research interests (primary and secondary); include the abstracts of your papers (including your JMP); include teaching evaluations; and include a list of referees. Post a polished version of your JMP early (but make sure it is polished) and continually update it to improve it. Make sure the whole document is carefully proofread and well formatted, and pay particular attention to the abstract and introduction. Post other papers if you have them (this shows a broader range of interests), but only if they are as polished as the JMP. Take advice from your supervisors on where to apply. Apply for as wide a range of jobs as is practical (since there is a lot of randomness in the job market), but do not go for jobs that you know you would not take. Tell them about yourself. You should be comfortable talking about your research so get in the habit of doing this by practising. Take every opportunity to talk about your work with your fellow PhD students, faculty members and visiting seminar speakers. Present your JMP at every seminar and conference possible. The more often you pitch your paper, the more questions you will have heard and the better prepared you’ll be in an interview. For the first round of EJME interviews, prepare a five minute summary overview of your JMP, stating clearly and concisely its original contribution and importance. Prepare a ten minute extension describing the important elements of the paper. Practice these presentations with your fellow students and supervisors. Prepare two to three minute summaries of any of your other projects. Dress professionally for interviews and find a quiet place with a reliable internet connection if they take place online. Make sure you have looked at the interviewer’s webpages, know who they are (their research centres, areas of expertise, etc.) and prepare a good reason for applying there. The fly-outs. The first round of EJME interviews only exist as the necessary hurdle to reaching the fly-out interviews. This is where the practice of your hour-long seminar comes into its own. Remember that the fly-out seminar is to a generalist audience. A series of short small group or one-to-one interviews can be quite intense – everyone will have seen your seminar presentation and will have an opinion to share. They can also be disorientating, as you try to remember whether you have already said something in this meeting or whether it was in the last meeting ten minutes ago. At this stage, recruiters want to go beyond the JMP, looking to see the range of skills you have, what you will offer in the future (your five year plan), your teaching preferences, and generally how you will fit into the department. Do your homework so that you know the place well before you arrive. You also get an impression of the institution, and should consider questions, including: what is the research environment like (seminar programmes, research centres, research budgets)? What is the teaching like (teaching loads, make-up of the student body, the sort of teaching required)? What is it like to live here? A shrewd institution will know that this is its opportunity to sell itself to you as well as vice versa, so be interested. Making a decision. If you are given an offer, the dynamics of the EJME are turned upside down. This will be one of the few instances where you can have real leverage over your prospective employer. There might be some flexibility on teaching loads, what you are asked to teach, and research funds, so it is worth talking about this. Salaries are not always negotiable if there are rigid pay scales, but there might be flexibility on where you are placed on the scale. There are occasionally ‘golden hellos’ and time-limited or permanent market premia that can be negotiated. Keep institutions informed of your job market position as far as you can – future fly-outs, competitors’ offers, etc. This may enable you to get extensions on decision deadlines. In any case, the recruiter’s reaction tells you something about how keen they are to have you. Having said all this, keep in mind that the recruiter is working hard to land the best people for their institution too. So be fair in driving for a bargain and in making your mind up as quickly as you can. Finding the right match. An institution will often have preferences on the sort of person that they want to recruit, even if they do not specify this in their job adverts. Institutions may be looking broadly for someone to bolster existing research teams, to develop a new area of strength or to fill various teaching needs. Depending on the institution’s existing skills mix, it might have vague preferences for a technical theorist or econometrician or a broad-based applied economist. It is not usually possible to know this from the institution’s webpages. All you can do is present an honest picture of yourself, showcasing your skills and what you can bring to the institution. If you do not get a job offer, you should not take it personally. The 2022/23 EJME The 2022/23 EJME builds from the beginning of September when recruiters begin to advertise jobs on INOMICS, as well as various other outlets. Candidates should upload their job market packages with their applications and pursue opportunities, following the information and instructions for the job application on each job posting carefully as they arise through the autumn. Candidates are encouraged to register early for the EJME as a first step to organising interviews with recruiters and for access to events organised for candidates. Details are available through the EJME website. The EJME offers a further opportunity to enhance your profile by uploading your job market package to the EJME Candidate Directory. This provides another forum through which recruiters can search (both during the regular season and in the post-season clearing market) for candidates who can enter up to three research fields and their PhD-granting institution. For the clearing market, candidates can remove themselves from the directory after they get a job. But, if you are unsuccessful at first, this provides an opportunity for recruiters to see who still is available. The first round of interviews in 2022/23 EJME will be online and are scheduled to take place on 12-14 December. Fly-outs will take place between January and March and recruiters are being encouraged to make offers with deadlines no earlier than 1 February 2023. More advice and further tips are available on the Royal Economic Society website. Good luck with your job search! 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 and article image credits: WebTechExperts/Joseph Mucira via Pixabay (free for use under the Pixabay Content License)
The European Job Market for Economists (EJME) takes place annually. It aims to ensure that economics students who are about to complete (or have recently completed) their PhD make the best possible job match with institutions recruiting research economists.
The Top Free Online Econometrics Courses
The courses listed here don't require enrollment in an institution, and are all free of charge for at least a limited time. Many of the Coursera courses allow free enrollment, but may require a fee after a certain amount of time has passed. So, no matter where you are (in your home) - at your kitchen table, armchair, or even in bed - you can have econometrics taught to you by some of the top professors, hailing from some of the world's leading universities. The courses here are all econometrics related, though some cover introductory statistics, which is a necessary prerequisite to understand econometrics. All the courses are available in English and are targeted at various different levels of study. So, no matter where you are in your studies, whether you are doing a Bachelor's or a PhD, you should find something of interest. While some are open tutorials available at any time of the year, others have opening and closing dates for participation. 1. Econometrics: Methods and Applications Course Provider: Erasmus University Rotterdam/Coursera Duration: 8 weeks Background needed: The course is suitable for (advanced undergraduate) students in economics, finance, business, engineering, and data analysis, as well as for those who work in these fields. 2. The Classical Linear Regression Model Course Provider: Queen Mary University of London / Coursera Duration: Approx. 22 hours Background needed: Introductory course, no experience required. This is the first in a series of 4 courses: Econometrics of Economists and Finance Practitioners 3. Basic Statistics Course Provider: University of Amsterdam / Coursera Duration: 8 weeks Background needed: None; this is a beginner course that will help students get familiar with statistics. This and its following course are necessary background for econometrics coursework. 4. Inferential Statistics Course Provider: University of Amsterdam / Coursera Duration: 7 weeks Background needed: Basic Statistics, the course listed just above, is the prerequisite for this course. 5. Econometrics Course Provider: MIT Duration: Self Paced Background needed: Completed introductory course to statistics in economics. Students should be familiar with basic concepts in probability theory and statistical inference (courses #3 and #4 on this list can help you get started with that, if you need it!). 6. Econometrics MOOC Course Provider: Econometrics Academy Duration: Self-paced Background needed: Bachelor's-level knowledge of linear regression models and economic statistics will help you get started, as courses begin at a Master’s level. 7. Bayesian Statistics: From Concept to Data Analysis Course Provider: University of California at Santa Cruz / Coursera Duration: 4 weeks Background needed: Basic background in frequentist (i.e., “regular”) statistics, which courses #3 and #4 on this list can help with. 8. Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation Course Provider: Berkeley Duration: 12 weeks Background needed: Knowledge of statistical methods and software such as MATLAB.
Although the shift toward online learning pre-dated the coronavirus, the pandemic caused a great proliferation in the availability and acceptance of online learning. More and more courses can now be found online, allowing students to continue with their studies or even get credit for some courses from the comfort of their own home.
A Post-PhD Career in Research: Jack of all Trades, Master of Some
The importance of writing as communication It is indeed true that researchers like us (post-docs, research fellows, senior researchers, and so on) working in academia or in public/private/non-profit institutes spend a lot of time at their desks: writing articles, among other things. We maybe Doctors of Philosophy, but in reality, we are Masters in Writing and a few other things. This is because the demands of a researcher’s role requires us to be jacks of a lot of trades and masters in some. Writing is intrinsically connected to communication. As researchers we need to be good at communicating our thinking – what we study, why and how, and what we can (and cannot) conclude from the results – to diverse audiences. These include fellow scientists, policymakers, university administrators, and the wider public. It requires us to be as creative as the advertising professional next door. We need to learn how to crisply frame catchy titles so that articles promptly capture the attention of editors. We seek creative answers to questions such as: how do we in 200 words summarize a complex research idea that took us six months to conceptualize, test and execute? What is the next big research idea, and how will it get us a zillion citations in a few months? Developing managerial skills In addition, we also start playing managerial roles. First, we need to hone our skills in people management. Supervising students, research assistants, doctoral scholars, and entry-level post-docs is a daily activity. This throws up new challenges: how do we find a good balance between our research interests and nurturing those of our junior researchers? How do we encourage them to work hard while also ensuring that they do not get burnt out? How do we find research assistants who care as much about our research as we do? How do we incentivize the masters’ students to put in their very best in executing the research plans they have drawn up? Second, we need to develop good project management skills: for instance, we need to ensure that our research assistants set realistic deadlines. However, even well-planned deadlines may sometimes turn out to be unrealistic. In such cases, contingency actions need to be taken to ensure that promises to external stakeholders are kept. Third, budgeting: we need to pay our research assistants at market rates and budget accordingly, while also reserving funds for travel, lab equipment, subcontractor expenses and organization of workshops & other project events. However, research funds are never enough for all the fancy research we aspire to conduct, especially if we recruit a research assistant who is so good that we want to retain them. In such cases, we need answers to an added list of troubling questions: for instance, should we pay them more than the market rates by reallocating funds from some of the other research plans? Research as entrepreneurship Ambitious researchers like us soon encounter our Matrix moment. We soon realize that all that we have been taught during our graduate studies was only partly true. We soon realize that, we are part-researchers and part-entrepreneurs. Organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) are our private equity firms. In order to entice them to grant us huge bags of research money, we have to tap into our inner entrepreneurial self, polish our managerial skills, hone our creative juices and write up grant proposals. If we are good entrepreneurs, we will be blessed with money, resources, talented PhD students, and hopefully a few well-cited academic articles in high-impact journals. However, being entrepreneurial isn’t enough. We also have to develop organizational skills for planning stakeholder meetings. These stakeholder meetings ensure that our research is grounded: that we are not wasting our hard-earned grant money in proposing arcane theory on obscure topics. Good research takes into account the costs and benefits to all stakeholders who are involved with or affected by the research. Planning such events is a tough job – it requires answering questions such as: how do we make stakeholder meetings truly participatory in nature? How do we develop seating arrangements so that power imbalances between stakeholders don’t impede communication? How do we goad them to open their minds and tell us what they truly think of our research? What kind of catering preparation need to be made? Are the expectations of participants, regarding both catering and other organizational aspects, influenced by country-specific cultural practices? <11an>limit:3;categories:PhD Programs;disciplines:Economics</11an> Necessary skills for good researchers And that brings us to the most important and least talked-about role that a researcher has to play: knowledge brokering, with its fine balance of advice and advocacy. Good research is necessary for solving societal challenges, whether in the short term (in the case of the applied sciences) or in the long term (in the case of the fundamental sciences). Societal challenges can be solved only if researchers seek to bridge the gaps that exist across varied scientific disciplines, policy and society. This requires us to be reflexive about our work. It also means that we have to advocate the implications of our research (and its associated uncertainties) with policy makers, grass-roots activists, private firms, funding agencies, students and society in general. In other words, a good researcher is not only a master in research and writing, but also a jack of many other trades. A good researcher is a good manager, a self-motivated entrepreneur, an event planner, a creative communicator and a passionate-but-reflexive advocate of the role of science in solving societal challenges. A doctoral program teaches a prospective researcher to be good at framing research questions, at identifying appropriate research methodology for answering these questions and at implementing research plans using such methodology. Over time researchers also become good at writing. However, many of the other skillsets discussed above are less well-developed during graduate education. This is a missed opportunity. Drawing on our own experiences, we wrote this article to highlight this oversight. This is because we believe that doctoral students need to be equipped with skillsets in management, planning, creative communication and knowledge brokering. Only then can they function as effective solvers of societal challenges. Sanchayan Nath is a post-doctoral researcher at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development (Utrecht University, The Netherlands). Arjan Wardekker is a senior researcher at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development and visiting scholar at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (University of Bergen, Norway)
Our favorite caricature of a post-doctoral researcher: a frail man (or woman) with unkempt hair, hunched in front of a computer screen, with a half-filled cup of coffee by his side. As the coffee gets colder and time flies by, he appears oblivious to his surroundings. He is happy spending long hours at his desk conceptualizing arcane theory on obscure topics the real world does not care about. He is in a state of eternal "tapasya" – meditating on his eternal love-affair with knowledge…because life is an eternal quest for knowledge! Or, so the world believes. Once the PhD has been completed, and freshly-minted researchers decide that research is what they would like to do for the rest of their lives, their friends and family might start assuming that a Doctor of Philosophy is just another armchair intellectual.
How to balance your PhD and your social life
Treat your PhD like a regular job One of the challenges of adjusting to life as a PhD student is the lack of a firm schedule or a definite structure. Although there are options for structured PhD programs, especially in the US, many PhD programs do not have required coursework or set work times. This can make it hard to know when you should be working, and conversely, when you are allowed to take time off. To help with this, where possible set some regular working hours for yourself and try not to answer emails outside of normal working hours. There can be considerable pressure from your supervisor and others to be available at all times, but waking up in the middle of the night to answer emails is not healthy. And, if you stick to regular working hours – for example, 9 to 6 from Monday to Friday – you'll have less of a need to answer late night emails. This will help to keep your evenings free for social events, both practically and mentally. <11an>limit:3;categories:PhD Programs;disciplines:Economics</11an> You need holidays and days off Similar to the advice above, when doing a PhD program there is a feeling like you should be working every spare second that you have. But no one can work 100% of the time. For the sake of your social life and your well being, it's vital that you take weekends and holidays off. Use this time to see friends and family and try not to think too much about work while you do. One good way to take vacation is to add a few days to the end of your trip when you travel to a conference. Conferences are usually held in exciting locations and you'll only need to pay for the extra days at a hotel and your daily expenses. A few days off after a busy conference can be a great way to relax with friends, co-workers, or a partner. Attend social events at your institution If you don't know many other people who are doing a PhD, you might feel very isolated and like no one understands what you're going through. A good way to get to know other people in the same situation as you is to attend grad school events at your institution. It is always helpful to get to know other PhD students, especially those working in your field, so that you can support each other and trade tips on succeeding at a PhD. Taking this time to meet and chat with other PhDs isn't only important socially – it's also a part of professional networking. So don't feel bad about taking a few hours after work to go out with your fellow PhDs. Prioritize events and don't try to do everything On top of your research work, when you do your PhD you'll have lots of other events to attend too: department meetings, grad school events, lectures, workshops, conferences, summer schools, and more. These extra events can absolutely help you in your PhD and you should definitely attend some of them. However, you won't be able to attend everything – and if you tried to then you wouldn't have time for your research, let alone for time off. So prioritize these events – what is necessary, and what is optional? You are allowed to decide not to attend a lecture or other event if you are just too busy. Create a timeframe for finishing your PhD A difficult part of finding a balance with your PhD is that it is such a long-term project; usually it lasts at least three years, but often more. This makes it hard to know what goals you should be hitting when, which in turn means that you don't know when it is reasonable to take time off. A way to deal with this is by drawing up a timeframe of your PhD which plans the dates by which you would like to have achieved certain goals. For example, maybe you would spend three months researching experimental methodologies, another three months designing and implementing your own methodology, six months of data collection, then a year on your data analysis and writing up a paper. Once you have this timeframe, even if it is only approximate, you can feel more confident about your progress through your PhD and feel less guilty about taking time off. Knowing that you are hitting your targets will allow you to take social time more comfortably.
Doing an economics PhD can feel like an all-encompassing task, but it's important for your well-being that you have a social life during this time as well. It can be hard to balance the two, but if you don't, you may find yourself overwhelmed and not able to enjoy your time researching and writing as much. Here are tips on balancing your PhD with your social life.