writing tips for phd students john cochrane

The Grumpy Economist

John Cochrane's blog

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Writing compactly, 12 comments:.

No need to write a paper if you can make your point in a tweet. Except that tweets don't build a good CV )-;

Very good advice. Unless you're being paid by the word (as with some famous 19th century authors), in which case "never use 1 word when 10 will do". :-)

In my salad days, I was a corporation lawyer. I had a client who absolutely refused to read anything I sent him that was more than one page long. Further he insisted that the page have generous margins and the writing be set forth in a series of "bullet points" (i.e. like a power point slide). And, he had zero tolerance for jargon. Keeping him happy was quite a challenge, but I learned a lot about how to be concise and communicative.

Prof Cochrane - did you, in the past, post a 4 page paper on using the language/ methodology of software programming to describe economic modelling? If so, would you mind posting a link to it on your blog? Thanks.

The advice for journalists and economic commentators working for newspapers is of course the direct opposite of the above. I.e. if you can take a simple point and turn it into a thousand words of impressive sounding hot air and waffle, you’ll be guaranteed a secure job and decent pay with some newspaper.

There are few points worth making that cannot be made in 250 words. Many concepts could have been a brilliant essay but instead became a mediocre 350 page book.

Smaller point but I used your conclusion in a discussion this fall "May economists falsely think of themselves as scientists who just “write up” research. We are not" just a typo (many) worth fixing while you're at it. Thanks for the wonderful advice!!!!

Yeah. "Fix typos before you release anything" is more good advice in the "do as I say don't do as I do" category.

Please share more content.

I am a student and that post is very useful for me.

It must be done through some efficient ideas.

Comments are welcome. Keep it short, polite, and on topic. Thanks to a few abusers I am now moderating comments. I welcome thoughtful disagreement. I will block comments with insulting or abusive language. I'm also blocking totally inane comments. Try to make some sense. I am much more likely to allow critical comments if you have the honesty and courage to use your real name.

Writing at the Graduate Level

Personal statements.

2 Law School Personal Statements That Succeeded ( Ilana Kowarski , U.S. News & World Report) An article that discusses successful personal statements for law school.

10 tips for writing a grad school personal statement (Billie Streufert, USA Today) “While you cannot change your grade point average or entrance exam scores, you have complete control over the contents of your personal statement. There are many applicants and few spots, so work diligently to persuade readers that you fit their program given your qualifications, interests and professional goals. Use the tips below to prepare and refine your essay.”

Advice for Writing Personal Statements (George Mason University, The Writing Center) A list of rhetorical questions to ask yourself when preparing a personal statement.

Writing a Personal Statement (Binghamton University, Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development) (PDF) Includes strategies for focusing your essay, prewriting questions, resources, and tips.

Writing the Personal Statement (Purdue OWL) “This handout provides information about writing personal statements for academic and other positions.” It includes rhetorical questions to ask yourself before you begin writing and helpful advice. The following sections are also excellent resources:

• Advice from Admissions Representatives Read about what admissions officers from different colleges say they’re looking for in an admissions essay or statement.
• Examples of Successful Statements Two personal statement examples that can serve as resources for writers composing their own personal statements.
• Personal Statement: Top 10 Rules and Pitfalls As the title suggests, this source lists some “dos” and “don’ts” for writing a personal statement.

Write Your Personal Statement (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Career Center) Provides tips for writing personal statements.

Writing Your Medical School Personal Statement (The Princeton Review) A brief list of tips for writing a personal statement when you’re applying to medical school.

Writing Your Personal Statement (University of Delaware, Career Center) An overview of writing personal statements with general tips, a suggested process, self-reflective questions, and a list of “dos” and “don’ts.”

EXPECTATIONS AND GOALS OF GRADUATE-LEVEL WRITING

Introduction to Graduate Writing (Dr. Emily Heady, Liberty University Graduate Writing Center) “Some characteristics of good graduate-level writing remain consistent across disciplinary boundaries. This workbook is designed to give students practice in these areas, which include the following:

• Punctuation
• Logic and Organization
• Critical Thinking
• Diction and vocabulary
• Research Writing

In addition, this workbook will give students limited practice in discipline-specific skills such as citation.”

Do’s and Don’ts of Graduate Writing (Debra Davenport, Purdue University) A handy article listing expectations of graduate-level writing.

Graduate Student Writing Resources (Portland University, Writing Center) Here you’ll learn about the differences between undergraduate and graduate-level writing, research, language use, documentation, and integrating evidence.

Temple University Harrisburg Guide To Graduate Level Writing (Temple University; retrieved from Utica College Resources for Graduate Students) (PowerPoint Presentation Download) This PowerPoint presentation provides students with a way to approach writing a 10-12-page paper, from finding a topic to making final edits. It also includes information on making sentence-level revision, with emphases on the following topics: clarity, semantics, positive phrases, subordination, parallel structure, and paragraph construction. Finally, the presentation offers a brief overview of APA citations.

USING PRIMARY, SECONDARY AND TERTIARY SOURCES

How to Read a Primary Source (University of Iowa, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: History) This source provides a series of critical thinking questions to help you analyze a primary source based on its purpose, argument, presuppositions, epistemology, and relationship to other texts.

Research Using Primary Sources (University of Maryland, University Libraries) Primary, secondary and tertiary sources are explained with definitions and examples. Included on this page you will also find a short video detailing specific criteria for evaluating sources.

A Source’s Role in Your Paper (Harvard College Writing Program) “When you begin to draft your paper, you will need to decide what role each of your sources will play in your argument. In other words, you will need to figure out what you’re going to do with the source in your paper. As you consider what role each source will play in your paper, you should begin by thinking about the role that source played in your research process.” This source offers “a list of questions to help you decide how you’re going to use each of your sources.”

What are Primary Sources? (Yale University) Primary Sources at Yale divides primary sources into the following categories, with detailed explanations and tools for finding sources within each category: Books and Pamphlets, Serials, Government Documents, Manuscript and Archival Material, Maps, Realia/Artifacts, Tablets, Visual Materials, Music, Sound Recordings, Oral History and Dissertations.

What Are You Supposed To Do With Sources? (Harvard College Writing Program) Identifying useful sources is an important part of the research process, but it is equally important to understand how to use these sources effectively in your paper. This source details how to consider your sources in the context of your central research question, discipline, and scope of your paper.

What is Primary Research and How Do I Get Started? (Purdue OWL) “Primary research involves collecting data about a given subject directly from the real world. This section includes information on what primary research is, how to get started, ethics involved with primary research and different types of research you can do. It includes details about interviews, surveys, observations, and analysis.”

IRB APPLICATIONS

Common Problems with IRB Applications (Montclair State University, IRB) The Montclair State University IRB has compiled a list of common issues with applications they review. Here is a list of these issues and a description of the measures you can take when completing your application to avoid them.

How do I improve my consent’s “readability”, or lower its “reading level”? (Montclair State University, IRB) (PDF) This document explains how to test your document’s readability according to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and the steps you can take to improve its readability.

Identifying and Avoiding Bias in Research (Christopher J. Pannucci and Edwin G. Wilkins, National Center for Biotechnology Information) In the second section of this article, “Pre-trial bias,” you can learn about “the importance of clearly defining both risk and outcome, the necessity of standardized protocols for data collection, and the concepts of selection and channeling bias.” Clearly defining, acknowledging, and/or avoiding non-intentional bias in your research design will help you submit a well-planned and thorough IRB application.

Montclair State University: Institutional Review Board (Montclair State University, IRB) “The purpose of this website is to provide investigators and the research community at the University with the information and materials that are needed to obtain IRB approval of research that involves human participants.”

Readable Readability is a measure of how easy a piece of text is to read. It can include elements of complexity, familiarity, legibility and typography. Readability formulas usually look at factors like sentence length, syllable density and word familiarity as part of their calculations.

Tips to Reduce IRB Application Turnaround Time (The University of Mississippi) These tips from the University of Mississippi include some best practices for all researchers submitting IRB applications.

WRITING TERM PAPERS

Graduate School Papers and You (Tara Kuther, Thought Co.) Kuther explains the importance of recognizing short papers in graduate school as furthering scholarly exploration, creating opportunities for constructive feedback, improving writing skills, and preparing for a thesis or dissertation.

Writing Tips for PhD Students (John H. Cochrane, University of Chicago) (PDF) Cochrane offers tips for PhD students who are organizing, writing, and presenting seminar papers. Although he focuses mostly on business writing, much of his advice can be useful for all postgraduate writers.

WRITING YOUR THESIS, PROSPECTUS OR DISSERTATION

Abstracts (UNLV Writing Center) (PDF) This page defines what an abstract is providing samples.

How Theses Get Written: Some Cool Tips (Steve Easterbrook, University of Toronto) (PDF) These presentation slides offer tips for writing your thesis and insights into how your examiner/advisor might review or comment on your work.

How to Organize your Thesis (John W. Chinneck, Carleton University) This page highlights the importance of graduate research, offers a generic thesis structure, and provides some suggestions for writing your thesis.

Prospectus Writing (Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning) This site includes guidelines and links to prospectus examples from different disciplines.

Resources for Dissertators (University of Wisconsin – Madison, The Writing Center) “This page lists some useful books and websites for graduate students working on dissertations.”

Time Management Tips for Dissertation Writing (Elizabeth Gritter, UNC Chapel Hill; Retrieved from The Southern Association for Women Historians) (PDF) In this handout, Gritter presents time management strategies for people who are writing their dissertations.

Writing a Literature Review (Purdue Owl) “A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research (scholarship) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.”

Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation (S. Joseph Levine, Michigan State University) “Instead of examining such aspects as identifying appropriate sample size, field testing the instrument and selecting appropriate statistical tests, this guide looks at many of the quasi-political aspects of the process. Such topics as how to select a supportive committee, making a compelling presentation of your research outcomes and strategies for actually getting the paper written are discussed.”

Writing the Thesis (Mark C. Griffin, San Francisco State University) (PDF) “This guide is designed to give you a procedural outline for working on your thesis. Every thesis project will have special considerations that are not covered here. You should consult with your committee early and frequently to resolve how to handle these special considerations.” The format and documentation of your project will vary based upon your school and discipline.

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Resources for PhD Students

Are you ready for PhD?

• The complete guide to getting into an economics PhD program (by Miles Kimball)
• Should you do a PhD? (by Daniel K. Sokol)
• So, you want to go to a grad school in economics? (by Ceyhun Elgin and Mario Solis-Garcia)
• Professional advice for applying to grad school in economics (by Susan Athey)
• How to survive your first year of graduate school in economics (by Matthew Pearson)

Safeguard your Mental Health and Wellbeing

• Mental Health, Bullying, Career Uncertainty (by Colleen Flaherty)
• Grad school depression almost took me to the end of the road—but I found a new start (by Francis Aguisanda)
• Panic and a PhD (by Jack Leeming)
• How mindfulness can help Ph.D. students deal with mental health challenges (by Katie Langin)
• Managing Your Mental Health as a PhD Student (by Joanna Hughes)
• What Makes It So Hard to Ask for Help? (by Joan Rosenberg)
• There’s an awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about (by Jennifer Walker)
• Faking it (by Chris Woolston)

Start your Research

• How to get started on research in economics? (by Steve Pischke)
• Ph.D. Thesis Research: Where do I Start? (by Don Davis)
• How to build an economic model in your spare time (by Hal R. Varian)
• Doing research (by Paul Niehaus)

Best Practices for Coding and File Organization

• Code and Data for the Social Sciences: A Practitioner’s Guide (by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro)
• Coding for Economists: A Language-Agnostic Guide to Programming for Economists (by Ljubica Ristovska)
• Stata Coding Guide (by Julian Reif)
• Data science for economists (by Grant McDermott)

Replicability and Interpretation

• Data and Code Guidance by Data Editors (by Lars Vilhuber)
• Is a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Environmental and Resource Economics (by Paul Ferraro and Pallavi Shukla)
• 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility (by Monya Baker)
• What is the question (by Jeffery Leek and Roger Peng)
• Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims (by William Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter and Mark Burgman)

Writing Skills and Tips

• Writing tips for PhD students (by John H. Cochrane)
• Writing Tips For Economics Research Papers (by Plamen Nikolov)
• The Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper (by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz)
• Writing Papers: A Checklist (by Michael Kremer)
• Aphorisms on Writing, Speaking, and Listening (by Eric Rasmusen)
• Writing a Dissertation (by David Levine)
• The Introduction Formula (by Keith Head)
• Between the Introduction and the Conclusion: The "Middle Bits" Formula for Applied Papers (by Marc F. Bellemare)
• The Conclusion Formula (by Marc F. Bellemare)

Presentation Skills and Tips

• How to Give an Applied Micro Talk (by Jesse M. Shapiro)
• Tips on how to avoid disaster in presentations (by Monika Piazzesi)
• How to Present Results (by David Levine)
• Public Speaking for Academic Economists (by Rachael Meager)

Peer Review and Grantsmanship

• Q&A with Larry Katz, editor of QJE (by Berk Özler and David McKenzie)
• How to Write an Effective Referee Report and Improve the Scientific Review Process (by Jonathan Berk, Campell Harvey and David Hirshleifer)
• Preparing a Referee Report:Guidelines and PerspectivesE (by Jonathan Berk, Campell Harvey and David Hirshleifer)
• Navigating Peer Review (by Chris Barrett)
• All Things Grants (by Chris Barrett)

Getting Ready for Job Market

• A Guide and Advice for Economists on the U.S. Junior Academic Job Market 2018-2019 edition (by John Cawley)
• Economics Job Market Advice
• Tips for Job Market (by David Laibson)
• Looking for a Faculty Position? Agricultural Economics vs Economics (by Jason Lusk)
• Scrambling for Economists: The Ph.D. Job Search (by Jessie Romero)
• Going on the Job Market (by David Levine)
• So you want to build an academic website? (by Kevin H. Wilson)
• Thread of advice on econ job market CV's! (by Sarah Jacobson)
• Economist Jobs Outside Academia
• Interview with AEA Ombudsperson Leto Copeley
• Non-Profit Jobs

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Other dissertation support books are available at the Regenstein Library. The easiest way to browse is to search: “Dissertations, Academic – Authorship”

Online Resources

• John Cochrane’s Writing Tips for PhD Students
• Steven Pinker’s Why Academics Stink at Writing and How to Fix It
• EconScribe’s Resource Blog
• Inside Higher Ed gradhacker post: Surviving the Dissertation

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Book and Resource Recommendations This file contains a list of book, website, and other recommended resources for business school PhDs.

Researching and Writing in Economics (2021) Four business faculty members (below) joined to answer questions about researching and writing in economics.

• Tymon Sloczynski Assistant Professor of Economics
• Alice Hsiaw Assistant Professor of Economics
• James Ji Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Environmental Economics
• Yinchu Zhu Assistant Professor of Economics

The Stata-to-LaTeX guide (2021)

Writing Tips for PhD Students Paper by John H. Cochrane, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, 2005

"How to Alienate Your Readers" An article by Jane Osler from 2005

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Dissertation PhD Checklist 2023

Third Year Paper Guidelines (2022)

e-mail   about   personal  

Regarding e-mail : The place for application-related questions is a discussion board. Clarification in regard to rankings can usually be found in the methodology section.

Advance apologies to the many friendly people who e-mail me with suggestions; I'm slow to respond nowadays. My research and the job market have priority.

* U Melbourne

Updates : 04/10: (TM) This site has moved from econphd.net to econphd.econwiki.com! Thanks to all who have helped. Also, the site is now mantained by members of the TestMagic community, although don't expect many changes, at least not soon. Feel free to email if you have any suggestions, or do so at the TestMagic boards. The current administrator can be contacted at tm[dot]untitled^at^yahoo(dot)com 04/07: (CR) On a personal note, I’ve accepted a lectureship at the University of Queensland . The department is less known internationally than my main competing offer, but hired outstanding senior professors in micro theory last year and is quickly becoming recognized as Australia ’s top research department, certainly in micro theory.

I’m already teaching at UQ as of February, so even less time gets committed to maintaining econphd.net. But an update of the rankings is still on the cards for 2008, given the wide interest – I will seek funding to hire research assistants.

More on Getting There in Economics:

• Matthew Pearson 's (UC Davis) guide to Surviving the First-Year of grad school.
• On a related theme, Survive, Then Thrive , an empirical paper on grad school success.
• John Cochrane 's ( Chicago ) recommendations for academic writing: Writing Tips for PhD Students .
• John Creedy 's ( Melbourne ) introduction to the publishing process: From Manuscript to Publication .
• Harvard's Information for Graduate Students on the Job Market .
• John Cawley 's (Cornell) manual A Guide and Advice for Economists on the US Junior Academic Job Market .
• Hisham Foad 's ( San Diego State ) job-landing guide Memoirs of a Job Market Candidate .
• Paul Oyer (Stanford) on the luck factor in career success: The Macro-Foundations of Microeconomics: Initial Labor Market Conditions and Long-Term Outcomes for Econmoists and MBAs .
• Job Market Rumors and the Interview / Flyout and Offer wikis, run by mysterious benefactor “Tatonnement.”