When you apply to present at an economics conference, you'll often be asked to provide a letter of motivation along with your abstract and CV. This is used to decide which applicants will be invited to give a talk or poster presentation at the conference. But what information should this letter of motivation contain, and what's the best way to increase your chances of being accepted to present?

The COVID-19 crisis has hit hard enough and continues to affect the global container shipping market. The current economic situation does not give much hope for a short-term recovery of this market. Demand for container shipments has fallen sharply, especially as China closed much of its plants in February 2020. The volume of production or cargo to be exported to other countries plummeted. The situation was exacerbated by a number of restrictions and requirements in almost every industry and in the world's ports.

One of the areas of recruitment most adversely affected by COVID-19 is that of conferences and events, which until 2020 had been almost totally based on on-site attendance. With long-term health and safety measures in place affecting and restricting public gatherings, it is now time to rethink budget allocations and put them towards online broadcasting facilities as well as equipping your conference environment with the tools to continue, remotely.

With university life still suffering major disruptions and COVID fatigue reaching new heights, we at INOMICS felt it time for the latest instalment in our ‘online course’ series.

In recent years, an epidemic has enveloped university campuses across the world - and it's not the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Compared to any other generation of college students in history, current students experience more mental health issues than ever before. Some reports suggest that 35% of freshers in American universities experience anxiety disorders - and this percentage is compounded by the fact that, terrifyingly, nearly 10% of students have considered suicide in the previous twelve months. Since the 1950s, rates of suicides on American campuses have tripled, and it’s now the second most common cause of death among students. In the United Kingdom alone, a student commits suicide every four days.

Although recruiting efforts were initially slowed due to the coronavirus pandemic, things are picking up again. Companies, organizations and academic institutions all seem to be getting back into the swing of things.

Four years ago, the world adopted an ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designed ‘to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030’. Despite rising life expectancy and the eradication of many endemic diseases, more than 400 million people in the member states of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) still live in absolute poverty, subsisting on less than US$1.90 per day. It is, perhaps, these countries that face the greatest challenges in fulfilling the SDGs. Traditional methods of development finance have struggled to alleviate the extreme poverty in some regions of the world, leaving the poorest populations without the basic building blocks needed to lead healthy lives and build dignified livelihoods. Many remain deprived of primary healthcare, protection against infectious diseases, a sufficient and nutritious food supply, potable water, clean power, and sanitation.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly brought about fundamental changes in the ways in which we have traditionally approached recruiting. Job recruiting strategies have to be flexible and dynamic to ensure they fit with the current climate.

The current circumstances can be tough: being isolated from families and friends is difficult, and having to spend most of our time inside isn’t particularly healthy. However, there is one thing you can spend a lot of time doing which will improve your quality of life exponentially: reading!

Coronavirus has had a broad impact on the global economy. Particularly affected were the tourism, trade and industrial sectors, including the export and import markets. Demand for and consumption of goods decreased, and so did the international freight transport sector. The COVID-19 crisis continues to severely affect the container transport market and the current economic situation gives no hope for short-term recovery.

Before you start considering what crazy lucrative job you are going to get with your economics degree, consider this fact: a lot of rich people don’t like their money. Many complain about not knowing what to do with it all, yet simultaneously having huge anxiety they’ll lose it. They moan about their friends treating them like walking bank accounts, being judged for not looking the part, and no longer being able to visit - how to put it delicately? - less refined establishments. Many work like dogs in jobs they don’t find fulfilling to top up the coffers, only to realise they never have any time to have fun with it. And all jokes aside, some studies suggest that, while earning more money than the national average does improve life satisfaction, once you get past a certain salary threshold, money stops making you any happier. (Depending on where you live, this is around $100,000.)

No need to stress about your university exams – INOMICS is here to help! (Well, stress a little bit, that's healthy and can serve as motivation, but no need to freak out). Having already dispensed advice on facing down essay exams, this article turns to two other  university exam formats – short answer questions and multiple choice tests. These kind of exams require a different sort of preparation from essay or oral exams, preparation that the following will take you through.

Dubbed ‘the great equalizer’ at its outset, COVID-19 has often been described as picking its victims at random. Blind to race, ethnicity, and gender, it sees just a human body, a host that enables it to do what all pathogens are programmed to do: spread. While this, from a biological perspective, may be true, the disease’s sweep of the globe has been anything but equalising. Data from both the US and UK - who along with Brazil compete for the honour of worst pandemic response - show that in terms of cases and deaths, minorities are hugely overrepresented. We may all be weathering the same storm, but as Dr Zubaida Haque has put it, ‘we are not in the same boat’.

Given the excellent feedback we received from our audience on an earlier blog post that compiled a list of free econometrics courses online, we have now prepared for you a list of free online courses (MOOC format) that you can take in the discipline of mathematics. Like econometrics, proficiency in math is a prerequisite for performing well in economics courses at all reputable universities around the world. The knowledge required may range from high school algebra and differential equations to understanding the basics of logic and analysis of algorithms.