Third Year Research Seminar (Part 1)
Ph.D. students in the Field of Economics are required to take this year-long research seminar, and receive a grade of Satisfactory, in order to remain in good standing in the Ph.D. program. Students present and discuss each second-year paper, which must be completed before the semester opens and Economics 7850 meets for the first time. Students also present at least two additional papers or paper plans. These are intended to be part of the core of the student's thesis proposal, which must be given as part of the student's A Exam prior to the start of the fourth year of graduate study in the economics Ph.D. program. Economics 7851 ends with a mini-conference, attended by faculty and other Ph.D. students, in which each student makes a formal presentation in standard economics conference format, and each student discusses one of these presentations. Professional writing and presentation coaching is also provided.
Instructor: Barseghyan, L; Molinari, F; Vilhuber, L
Term: Fall
Location: Various
Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:15-5:30 PM
Course Overview
Econ 7850 consists of two parts. In Part 1, we will discuss several topics that are essential for successfully completing your research papers as well as applying for grants, refereeing for journals etc. We will do so in the following lectures (the depth may vary, and dates might change if they do we will announce the change at least a week in advance), see Schedule.
After Part 1 of the course, there will be a pause to allow you to prepare for your presentations. Presentations will start the week of October 20th. The schedule allows for two presentations on Mondays and Wednesdays; the first presentation will start at 4:20PM and the second presentation will start at 5:20PM. Friday meetings are held in reserve. If we meet, it will be at 4:20PM. Do not forget to invite at least two faculty members to your presentation.
Enrollment Information Enrollment
limited to: third-year Economics Ph.D. students or permission of instructor.
Links
- Cornell Roster
- 🔒 Canvas
Schedule
| Week | Date | Topic | Materials |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aug 25 | Introduction | |
| 2 | Sep 8 | Day 1 reproducibility We discuss how to set yourself up for reproducibility from the very first day of your project. | |
| 3 | Sep 10 | Useful tools - Why you should learn (and love) the command line You’ll see | |
| 4 | Sep 15 | Writing a referee report Writing good referee reports is an important part of the academic work. But providing constructive and effective feedback is not easy. We go through some basic ways to help in the first pass on a referee report. | |
| 5 | Sep 24 | High-performance computing and why you should care about it You run your code on your laptop, and it crashes. Use high-performance computing! We disuss when to use it, what the benefits and costs are, and where to use it. | |
| 6 | Oct 1 | Day N-1 reproducibility How do you check your project for reproducibility before you submit it? We discuss various strategies. | |
| 7 | Oct 6 | Writing articles that combine text and code To more efficiently combine processing of data and the writing up of results, a few methods exist. Word is not one of them. We discuss the pros and cons of various methods. | |
| 8 | Oct 15 | Reproducibility, transparency, and data ethics How do you create transparency and credibility when you cannot share the data you use? We discuss strategies both for data collection, data use, and data sharing. This is relevant if you collect your own data, or if you use confidential data. |