Now that everyone’s home from #ASHEcon2024, I wanted to expand on a running conversation I had with a bunch of grad students who met with me.

NOBODY TEACHES YOU HOW TO CONFERENCE!!!

Well, let’s do a quick thread on how to conference (as a PhD student) /1 First up, an observation. Conditional on having a well-defined subfield (e.g. labor, crime, health, etc) you also have a sub-sub field. For example, mine are mental health, Medicaid, or 🏳️‍🌈 health. The more narrowly-defined your work, the easier it is to find a community. /2

In the spirit of the olden days of #EconTwitter, I thought I’d write down some notes on finishing up my first year on the tenure track (in a liberal arts setting) in economics. These will be in no particular order and kind of stream of conscious. Let’s have a convo about it! 1/N Thought #1: Everyone is going to tell you that you’ll get nothing done. You will doubt them.

DO NOT DOUBT THEM.

Keep your head down, incorporate all the good feedback you got for your JMP/pipeline papers, and GET THEM SUBMITTED. That’s your primary goal. 2/N

I think we could stand to steelman the left-NIMBY position accurately memed in this great thread, if for no other reason than to have a principled response to people who *ACCURATELY* point out that market power could/may even be driving rent dynamics. /1

https://twitter.com/maxdubler/status/1642585968007069696

First, I want to reference a tweet from an old thread I did on teaching market power in Intermediate Microeconomics from a few years ago.

Joan Robinson points out in the Economics of Imperfect Competition that market power manifests in firm behavior /2

https://twitter.com/elben/status/1201911419492544512?s=20

I have a theory of EJMR that contrasts it from sites with ostensibly the same function like Urch or Reddit (r/badeconomics, etc).

Econ grad programs are extremely hard to get into for the average undergrad, and so you look under every rock for info, an edge to help you out. 1/N

https://twitter.com/kareem_carr/status/1431653242082152453

Somewhere along the way, you learn something horrifying: unless you were EXTREMELY lucky, took all the right classes, double majored, got a perfect quant GRE, RA’d for a major name, did a predoc, then the top programs are out of your reach. This is the Econ Red Pill. 2/N

Putting the finishing touches on my JMP this week, so I'm going to drop a teaser. I'll post a full thread in the coming weeks, but here's my paper in one figure /1 On the y axis is per-capita (per 100,000 residents) counts of prescriptions for drugs used to treat viral STIs that were reimbursed by Medicaid. On the x axis is each year-quarter from 2011-2018. 2014 q1 is marked with a red line. Why? Medicaid expansion happens then. /2

This is one of the most difficult post-quals task that an econ PhD student following the American grad school model will ever navigate. I want to give some less-practical, more philosophical advice to rising third years. /1

https://twitter.com/sharanbanerjee/status/1318391177553629185

Choosing a research agenda is the most important thing you will do in graduate school. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Qualifiers are a distraction. Field comps are a distraction. You MUST choose a topic that speaks to you or you will spend the next 2-3 years adrift. /2

Ok, so as promised to @deficitowls and @txex, it’s time for a thread on MMT! My purpose here was to (in good faith) read as much MMT literature as I could bear, and to respond beyond the usual “this is meaningless quackery” many academic economists offer. 1/N Let’s start with my reading list. Several blog posts from neweconomicperspectives.org like the MMT Primer, Huang’s Essays in Monetary Theory and Policy, and Tymoigne’s Money and Banking; also Warren Mosler’s “7 Deadly Innocent Frauds”, in addition to many others. 2/N