Still busy...

Receive email from IMF. I will have a preliminary interview with them at a hotel on Bond Street in London on 25 October. Attached to email is the description of this preliminary interview. It seems that I need to brush up my macroeconomics knowledge, which may be impossible...

Also receive email from a staff member in the Department of Economics at LSE, saying I have £300 funds available for postage related to job applications.

Email LSE post room to ask how sending job application packets works. The Department will pay the postage if I use regular air mail.

Receive email from Sawada-sensei about his own experience of the PhD economics job market. He says scheduling fly-outs is very important because too many flights exhaust you and undermine your seminar presentation performance. As I'm applying to all over the world (from Hong Kong and Singapore to Spain, Ireland, Italy and Sweden, from Australia to Canada) this can be a major concern for me.

Irrelevant to me, but an email on a job opening from French university is forwarded to all job market candidates at LSE. It's all written in French. The French market is completely closed from non-French speakers. Then Emmanuel, a french guy among us, emails us, saying, "Just for your information, you can be on the French "job market" only if you defended your thesis before December 15th and that the University National Council has approved your application for being hired!"

Try to organize everything about reference letters. Email Sue and Leila - my referrees' assistants - on the arrangement of sending reference letters. The earliest deadline is 4 November. But this school's website also says "closing date for applications: 2006-11-24". I contacted the university staff, but they don't know for sure. But they say as long as I've made online application, reference letters can arrive later than the deadline. So I've decided to ignore 4 November when it comes to reference letters. Torsten and the Harvard job market guide say, "Relax about application".

So the earliest deadline is 13 November. Airmail takes within 5 days from UK to US (3 days on average). So I make 7th November as OUR deadline for sending references.