73 places to apply.

Talk to Oriana, who read my job market paper. In addition to so many useful comments on the paper, she tells me why job market candidates need to apply for so many schools:

1. Use an offer from a school you're not interested in to solicit an offer (or a better offer) from another school which you're interested in.
2. Get to know more people who are interested in your research.

Add one more field to my secondary fields of research/teaching: applied microeconomics.

Send my CV to IMF.

Choose 73 places in total (including IMF and one post-doc position). I can't increase the number of schools any more.

Torsten stops by at my desk, saying, "Don't spend too much time on applications. It's wise to allocate time to research. A marginal cost of sending one more application is very low while checking whether a particular school is worth applying is costly."

My advice to job market candidates next year and onwards: Apply to every school in the world's top 100 as long as they have openings (except for top 25, for which you need approval from your supervisor). Plus, pick up other schools specializing in your field of research.