Tips for PhDs: From Getting Your Ideas to Selling Them

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Tips for PhDs From Getting Your Ideas to
Selling Them

• HEDG Journal Club 8 March, 2006
• Edit V. Velenyi and Silvana Robone

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Outline
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Getting Ideas What makes it tick?

• If students are going to earn degrees, theyve
  going to come up with dissertation topics. And
  since dissertations can be written about
  everything under the sun, the number of topics is
  infinite. Sheets of paper covered with word pile
  up in archives sadder than cemeteries, because no
  one ever visits then, not even on All Souls Day.

Kundera 1999
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Getting Ideas - Originality

• A GOOD idea
• Correct is not enough. Make it interesting.
• Journals Technique, insight, and truth
• But someone elses ideas. Be original.
• Look outside academic journals
• Interesting patterns, fallacious arguments, etc.
• Then apply your set of economic tools.
• To pursue or not to Opportunity cost?
• Become a Wizard of Ahs!

Varian 1997
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Organizing Ideas IncubationManaging the Process

• Folder Organization and Spiral Writing Process
• Notes Folder Initial sketch. Shuffling around.
• Preliminary Draft 1-2 days
• Aging Process -Fine Cheese Freud
• New Look ? First Draft
• Revision Control (Coauthors)
• New Look ? Revision
• Show (Presentation) Time ? Revision
• When to stop? If no more questions ? Publish
• On the Margin Bibliographic Reference - EndNote

Varian 1997
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Paper Structure - Rule of Thumbs

• 3 Parts Everyone, handful, no one.
• Grab reader on 1st page.
• Get to the point.
• Make it read/feel like your talk.
• 10-page rule recall capacity.

Varian 1997
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Paper Structure - Rule of Thumbs

• Distillation Process What is the one central and
  novel contribution of your paper?
• Write concise paragraph. Be focused and concrete.
• Assume skimming. Help reader get it quickly.
• Organize paper in newspaper, not in joke style.
• Your paper is not a travelogue or a memoir.
• Final paper be no more than 40 pages.
• Extra minimalist. Make point in less space.
• No repetitions. Say it once, right!

Cochrane 2005
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Paper Writing - General Guidelines

• Rule What you do ? explain ? compare to
  alternatives, procedures at micro macro levels.
• Poor Organization Signs preview and recall
• Strive for precision Does each sentence say
  something and does it mean what it says?
• Document your work.
• Simple is better. The less math used, the better.
  The simpler the estimation technique, the better.

Cochrane 2005
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Paper Structure Extra MinimalistImportance
Originality Weighting

• Abstract Obey 100-150 word limit on central and
  novel contribution.
• Introduction What you do. Explain. Give facts.
• 1st sentence is the hardest. No philosophy.
• No long motivation. Must be interesting on its
  own.
• No clearing throat. economize on space.
• 3-page rule
• No roadmap
• Literature Review get sequence right?
• First explain your contribution. Only then give
  brief literature review against the 2 or 3
  closest current papers.
• Strategic citations - leading editors to assign
  referees.

Cochrane 2005
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Paper Structure

• Body Get to central result as fast as possible.
• Wrong Long motivation and literature review,
  complex model.
• Rule There should be nothing before the main
  result that the reader does not need to know in
  order to understand it.
• Theory If main result is empirical, keep theory
  to minimum to help understand your work. Focus on
  specialized model only.
• Empirical Work Start with main result.
  Illustrate.
• Conclusions Not necessary if explanation and
  documentation was satisfactory in the body.
• Short and sweet. No speculation. No opinion.
• Appendices Dumping ground for comments on
  literature, generalized models, robustness tests,
  etc.

Cochrane 2005
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Paper Structure

• Footnotes Dont use it.
• Parenthetical? Delete. Important? Integrate in
  text.
• Potential candidates long references, simple
  algebra, etc.
• Tables Have self-contained caption to allow
  reader skim. Not substitute for documentation.
• Caption of regression table should have the
  equation and the name of the variables,
  especially the left hand one.
• Correct number of significant digits. Sensible
  units.
• Figures Good one make paper come alive. SCC.
• Writing Tips ? Over to McCloskey

Cochrane 2005
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Writing can be learned

• The economic writer, often, cherishes his habits
  of style as a something highly personal, and it
  is offensive for others to criticize them
• Linus what is this?
• Lucy this is something to help you be a better
  person next year This is a list I made up of all
  your faults.
• Linus Reading, increasingly indignant Faults?
  You call these faults? These arent faults! This
  are character traits!
• Writing is not a natural gift!
• Like mathematics, writing can be learned

McCloskey 1985
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Why writing is important

• Writing is the Economists trade
• Bad writing does not get read!
• Bad writing makes slow reading
• At any moment the reader can get up and leave
• Writing is Thinking
• Content and expression are not separable!
• Writing resembles mathematics it is an
  instrument of thoughts

McCloskey 1985
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Golden Rules

• Be clear
• The reader, like the consumer, is sovereign if
  she thinks that something you write in unclear,
  then it is, by definition
• Clarity differs from precision
• The advices are actually about re-writing
• You need not to hold the bulk of rules in your
  mind from the start
• Stage of first composition rules about whole
  essays and paragraphs
• Stage of revision rules about sentences and words

McCloskey 1985
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Lets start writing tips

• Dont wait until your research is finished to
  start writing (writing is thinking)
• Take notes, do not depend on your memory alone
• Saying it out loud what you are writing will help
• Imagine explaining to a colleague, professor
• If words do not come, try changing the
  surrounding (but do not visit the fridge!)
• At the end of a section write down your thoughts
  on what will come next

McCloskey 1985
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Avoiding the reader to give up tips

• Audience
• Pick a reader to ride and ride all the way with
  him.
• Tone
• The tone of writing is like the tone of voice
• If you are too flat, people will sleep
• If you yell at people, the will walk away
• If you are too passionate, people will suspect
  your argument need a tone of passion to overcome
  its weakness
• Irony

McCloskey 1985
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Paragraphs

• Length and big quotations
• Too long paragraphs make the reader to skip a lot
  to get to the next break / too short paragraphs
  give a breathless quality to the writing
• Use big quotations only to give the devil his due
  and an angel his voice
• Make your writing cohere
• Use the transitive writing (AB) (BC) (CD)
• You must repeat words to link sentences, but you
  can repeat words with the same root in different
  versions
• Avoid to beginning a paragraph with linking words
  (indeed, however, furthermore)

McCloskey 1985
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Paragraphs

• Example of transitive writing
• behind such rules on what to avoid (A) in
  paragraphs construction lies a rule (B) on what
  to seek. It is the rule (B) of coherence make
  writing hang together (C). The reader can
  understand things that hang together (C), from
  phrase up to book.
• (AB) (BC) (CD) look pretty, is easy to
  understand and it is probably reasonable
• (ABZYX) (MNOP) (BJKLC) looks ugly, it is
  impossible to understand and it is probably
  non-sense

McCloskey 1985
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Paragraphs

• Rhythm is important
• If every sentence is the same length and
  construction the paragraph will become monotonous
  
• (Gardner) An English sentence has grammatically
  speaking three parts subject, verb, object. (Es
  subject An English sentence, verb has
  grammatically speaking, object three parts)
• Vary your sentences by how much you put into each
  part (Es subject (implicit) you, verb
  vary, object sentences by how much you put
  into each part)

McCloskey 1985
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Verbs

• Verbs make English Write with nouns and,
  especially, with verbs, not with adjectives and
  adverbs.
• Avoid passive and conditional tenses
• Use present and not past tense (use imperative
  for explaining formulas)
• Avoid NOMINALIZATION
• (Es not there is a data reanalysis need, but
  we must reanalyse our data)
• Try to circle every is, find the actor and the
  action, transforming is in a verb when you can

McCloskey 1985
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Check and Tighten

• Avoid elegant variation. Parallelism is a virtue
• Differently from Latin or German, English does
  not have cases and genders to keep related words
  hitched. But you can exploit singular/plural
  and she/he
• Rearrange the order of the words in the sentence
  according to this rule
• Beginning of sentence average importance
  (2nd)
• Middle of sentence low importance (3rd)
• End of sentence high importance (1st)

McCloskey 1985
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Check and Tighten

• Avoid rhetorical question
• Delete as many commas as you can, delete any
  comma before the (EsIn revision the trick is
  to delete)
• Everything before that should be deleted from a
  sentence (Es it should be noted that)
• Query every this (and that) (Es 1) this
  shows 2) this idea..)
• 1) this what? this needs to be followed by
  some noun.
• 2) the reader has to look back, interrupting the
  flows of ideas, (increasing the risk the reader
  give up!) .

McCloskey 1985
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Check and Tighten

• Be concrete
• Do not overuse abstractions and make examples.
• A reader find it harder to translate abstraction
  down into concrete examples than the other way
  round.
• Be plain
• Prefer Anglo-Saxon words to Latin and Greek ones
• Pay attention to the use of hyphens
• Avoid economic jargon (when it make sense)

McCloskey 1985
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How to build models in your spare time? - Simple
Core

• So, got the good idea. Incubate it.
• Dont rush to journals. Start developing model
  ASAP.
• Models All the same
• 1st Stage Identify pieces of the model.
• 2nd Stage Work examples to see dynamics.
• 3rd Stage Whats common/interesting?
• Finally, write the model.
• Model - Simplified representation of life.
• KISS rule applies. Everything should be as
  simple as possible but no simpler. (Einstein)
• Reveals essence of dynamics. Reduced to pieces
  that are required to make it work.

Varian 1997
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How to build models in your spare time? - General
Case

• Now your model is too simple to be of interest.
• But easier to generalize special case since now
  you know what makes it work.
• Make your education pay off. Apply the relevant
  canonical model(s).
• Simplify to get result. Complexify to see
  general.
• Modeling
• Back-and-forth iterative process.
• Like sculpting, it does not consist of adding
  things, but of subtracting them.

Varian 1997
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How to build models in your spare time? Hurdles

• Now go for a thorough literature review
• How does your model compare?
• Potential problem along the process
• Lose perspective. Too close to it.
• Seek independent judgment
• Advisor, peers, spouses, pets
• Go back to figure what is the fundamental idea of
  you model. What are you really talking about?

Varian 1997
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Seminar Presentation

• The more you talk the better the paper will be.
• Forces you to get to the point.
• Get clear, concise, and organized.
• Essential feedback. Exploit it! Listen to
  questions.
• Fundamental scarcity of attention (Simon)
• Give a reason to be paid attention to.
• 3 Parts Intro (2) / Content / Conclusion (1)
• Get down to business. Limit paining the big
  picture. Say what youve done and why its
  important .
• 1st 20-minute rule

Varian 1997
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Seminar Presentation

• Capture and Control the Audience
• First content slide. Give reason to listen.
• Dont let them sleep neither to get too lively.
• Establish credibility. How?
• Exploit but do not abuse it.
• Questions - Do not get sidetracked.
• Do not let seminar trail off into silence.
• Know when to finish. Conclude (1 slide).
• Summarize Walk away message
• What you accomplished. Why they should care.

Varian 1997
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Conclusions
Cochrane 2005
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Conclusions

• Become the Wizard of Ahs!
• Writing is the economists trade and it is
  thinking.
• Writing can be learned.
• Become an (extra) minimalist.

Varian 1997
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References

• McCloskey, D. (1985), Economical Writing,
  Economic Enquiry, April
• Varian, H.R. (1997), How to Build and Economic
  Model in Your Spare Time, mimeo
• Cochrane, J.H. (2005), Writing Tips for PhD
  Students, mimeo
• Hamermesh, D.S. (1992), The Young Economists
  Guide to Professional Etiquette, Journal of
  Economic Perspectives, 61, 169-180.
• Zinsser, W. (1994) On Writing Well