Which school to apply?

Try to decide 100 schools to apply. Manage to select 45 schools (including six of top 10 schools) so far. At the same time, create an Excel spreadsheet of postal addresses which I will send Mark who will then creates address labels. In this process, I find that the application procedure differs slightly from school to school. A factor contributing to the complication is online application. Some schools require online application only (which can be either filling in an online form or emailing all the documents in the PDF format), some prefer online to postal application, some allow both, some require online "pre-application" in addition to postal application which includes a print-out of the filled-in online pre-application form, and others accept postal application only. This is MAD.

Find the job market information webpage for Harvard job market candidates. Also find that the December 2003 issue of Journal of the European Economic Association features articles on the rankings of economics departments in the world.

Goldin and Fryer (2006b) --- one of the job market guides on the Harvard website --- say "Don't apply to places that you would never consider. But do apply to places that are reasonably good but perhaps not in the right location or not with the best faculty. You don't know at this point ... whether this place will be useful in other ways (e.g., strategically or over the long haul --- you are always in the market)."

Fill in the online application form for NYU Department of Politics, because "applications received by October 15, 2006 have the best chance of being fully considered." The deadline for political science departments is earlier than economics departments. Following Tim's advice (see 10 Oct.), I decide not to apply for political science departments except for NYU. Why? NYU seems to me the most approachable to someone with economics background as several faculty members write papers with economists.

Can't attend Yuri's Japanese dinner party. Instead I eat sandwitches for dinner in front of the computer...

Address spreadsheet

Bump into Robin. Ask how many schools I should apply. His answer: 70 for US, 30 for Europe...

Receive email from Mark to urge me to submit the Excel spreadsheet of addresses of schools I'm going to apply for. Then he will make address labels to be attached on the application packets. I promise him I will do by next Monday, which means I need to decide which schools to apply by next Monday.

Struggle with one pontentially damaging aspect of my job market paper all day.

Submit my CV and job market paper to Mark. This is for the Department's job market candidate webpage.

Submit my job market paper to RES Annual Conference held next April.

Which school to apply???

Morning:
Register the ASSA Meeting, costing 35 US dollars.

Cancel a hotel room in Chicago (see 5 October for why).

Receive email from Tim on the abstracts on our joint research in progress, modify my CV acccordingly, and send it to Mark again.

Replace the CV in the HTML format with the CV in the PDF format on my website, following advice from my supervisor.

Look for teaching evaluation, which I need to give Oriana for helping her write a teaching reference. But I can't find it, and so ask Mark for a copy.

Receive an Excel template address spreadsheet from Leila. She's an assistant for three of my four referees. When she sends recommendation letters to the schools I'm applying for, she needs the addresses of these schools. But she has her own preferred way of managing addresses. That's why she gives me the template Excel sheet.

Afternoon:
Talk to Torsten, visiting LSE this term. He gives me several useful suggestions for the revision of my job market paper.

Try to decide which school to apply. But I'm overwhelmed... The October issue of JOE (this is where you can find job openings for economists) lists hundreds of schools. I begin with 30 schools or so from which I'm sure I would accept a job offer. Then I try to increase the number of applications to check department websites etc. because my referees advise me to aim for 100 schools. Indeed, 25% of economics job market candidates should apply for more than 100 schools (see page 14 of Cawley 2006).

Evening:
Revise the data appendix and abstract for my job market paper.

Email Rocco, a previous year LSE job market candidate, to ask how he chose which school to apply. His answer: "Apply anywhere you would accept an offer, if it was the only one you had." An exception to this is top schools for which he said, "Talk to your referrees frankly."

29th Birthday

A busy, busy day...

Morning:
1. Receive an acceptance message from the organizer of the 4th PhD Student In Development Economics Network Seminar at Namur University! The decision has been delayed due to a large number of applicants. My job market paper is still accepted as one of the six papers presented at the seminar. This is a good signal. Also this will be a very good opportunity to present my research to the audience outside LSE: what Tim strongly encouraged me to do.

2. Send a CV to Mark. Struggle on what to do with my contact detail during my stay in Tokyo late December (see below). Receiving a call in Japan with my UK vodafone handset costs 1.25 pound per minute. I put my Japanese pay-as-you-go mobile number in the end.

Afternoon:
1. Book a return flight to Japan. Strictly speaking, I don't need to go back. But why not relax a bit just before the climax of the job market process starts early January? All seats for Virgin Atlantic have already gone for my preferrable dates of departure. All Nippon Airways have got some seats on the aircraft flying to Tokyo on 18th December. I will be back in London on 26th December.

2. Collect job openings advertisements from the JOE website. 22 schools so far...

3. Talk to my supervisor. He read my job market paper thoroughly for the first time before this meeting, and he says, "With this paper, you can apply to anywhere you want." I don't believe my ears. He gives me a couple of suggestions to improve the introduction, which most people will only read. As he's away from London later next week, I need to revise it by next Wednesday. On the issue of the choice of fields of research and teaching, he tells me to write down a field that you want to teach as a secondary field. So applied econometrics is fine. Regarding the fourth reference letter, he says that a teaching reference from Oriana is a good idea given that East Asians have a bad reputation on teaching (which is sadly true...).

Evening:
1. At STICERD Welcome Reception (it's the beginning of a new academic year!), talk to Valentino, who got a PhD in economics and is now a lecturer at Department of Government. Ask him about what is like to get a job in a political science department. Get useful information on it.

2. Book Eurostar return ticket to Brussells for the Namur University conference (see above). Will leave on Thursday 26th, one day before the conference, because the earliest Eurostar train doesn't make it to the beginning of the conference. The conference organizer is very helpful, offering accommodation at some PhD student's place for two nights. Although it's in the middle of a job market process, why not do sightseeing a bit? As Eurostar on Saturday is all pricey, I book the earliest morning train on Sunday. Need to find an accommodation in Brussells on Saturday night.

3. Catch Oriana when she's leaving her office and ask for a teaching reference. She says yes. I will give her a copy of teaching evaluation from students that I got two years ago.

Mass-mailing of CVs of job market candidates

Send my CV to Mark. One reason for this is to mass-mail CVs of all job market candidates at LSE this year to many academic departments (which is "a standard practice amongst many of the top US schools" as Mark puts it). But Cawley (2006, p.19) writes:

Likewise, your department's mailing of CVs is not a substitute for a job packet mailing. Stock et al. (2000) found that only about half of hiring departments even review the packets of CVs, and only about 20% reported scheduling an interview on the basis of the CV packet.

Fourth Recommendation Letter

I have already secured three letters of recommendation (from my supervisor, Tim, and Robin). One concern, however, is that none of them know my teaching performance as I never worked for them as a teaching assistant. Noll (2005, p.19) say that one element of recommendation letters is "an assessment of your abilities as a teacher".

So I asked Oriana for writing my fourth recommendation letter because she's the only person who knows my teaching performance. She replied, saying "I don't think it's necessary." I thought this implicitly meant she did not want to write because she couldn't write a good letter for me.

But it was a wrong guess. When I bump into her at the STICERD communal space today, I ask her why she thinks her letter is not necessary. She says, "Robin (my third referree) should know my teaching." If I point out that is not the case, then she explains the reason a bit more, which reveals something I never knew before.

Recommendation letters for job market candidates consist of (1) description of the job market paper and (2) contribution of the job market paper. Your supervisor's letter is the most detailed and long while other letters are shorter. Oriana says that four letters that are all describing my paper and contribution will be too much.

But she says if my supervisor and Tim say it is a good idea for me to have Oriana's letter on teaching, she will write one. So I ask my supervisor on this tomorrow.

CV

Prepare my CV as Mark, our job placement administrator, asks job market candidates at LSE to submit one by midday tomorrow. He gave us a template CV, so it is rather easy as I only need to fill blanks. However, difficulty lies in "Works In Progress" section as I need to explain such works briefly. This takes a lot of time. Especially, two of them are joint works with Tim. So I email him if he thinks I should include them as "works-in-progress" on my CV.

An important item on CV is "Desired Teaching and Research Fields" (Hall 2001). According to Noll (2005, pp.12-15), "[y]our primary ... fields are the areas in which you do research and would advise graduate students; your secondary fields are those that you have the qualifications and interest to teach." A consensus recommendation on this seems to be to "define fields broadly". Noll (2005) also recommends consulting your advisers about your field choices. So I will when I talk to Maitreesh about which level and type of schools to apply tomorrow.

Cawley (2006, p.7)'s recommendations on CV are:
1. "The date your CV was revised should appear somewhere on the document."
2. "Keep detailed lists of every presentation, every award and grant you receive, and the journals for which you have refereed." (So I include a presentation at University of Essex last March.)
3. "[L]ist a phone number at which you can be reached if prospective employers wish to interview you. Make sure that you list a number connected to voice mail or an answering machine. If you list a phone number associated with an office used by a large number of graduate students you may fail to receive some messages." (So I put my mobile number instead of a shared phone number at STICERD.)

---

Receive email from Tim, answering my question on whether I should apply for political science departments: "I doubt that you want to try to break into the pol sci scene. It is very difficult and I doubt that you would share many common interests."

Receive email from my supervisor and we arrange our meeting tomorrow to discuss which school to apply.

Booking a Flight to Chicago, Talking to Seminar Speaker, and Criticized by Public Health Researcher

Book a return flight ticket from London to Chicago to attend the ASSA meeting in early January. I may not get any job interview offers at the ASSA meeting, but booking a flight just before the meeting is risky.

Talk to today's seminar speaker visiting LSE (see 5 October). Although my job market paper is not relevant to his research, he says it's interesting and he understands why I'm on the job market with this paper. That's a good sign, isn't it? He also asks me about other projects in my dissertation, and I talk about the ethnic conflict project. He says the empirical result (ethnic groups losing power suffer in terms of infant mortality) is interesting, but he asks a question of why this is so. That's a fair point and I need to think about it harder.

Attend LSHTM's public health lecture on sanitation and hygiene. After the lecture is over, I talk to the lecturer for asking some questions related to my job market paper. A logical progression is that I talk about my job market paper to this lecturer. She's very skeptical on my findings, making me think harder about my paper.

Revision finished

Finally manage to revise my paper. Send it to my three referrees and Oriana.

Talking to Seminar Speakers Invited to LSE

Oriana emails me and Paolo (one of my fellow job market candidates), suggesting talking to a seminar speaker for LSE/UCL Growth & Development Seminar next Monday. I thought he wouldn't be interested in my job market paper. But Oriana says it is very useful for job market candidates "to get comments and to practice exposing your ideas in a short span of time." She's right. During the course of the job market process, you will have many opportunities to talk to other economists briefly on your research, either at job interviews or at informal conversations to faculty members during campus visits. This will happen even if your conversation partner has no interest in your research. So we should prepare for that.

Various job market guides recommend getting to know what kind of research the economists you will meet have done in the past before doing job interviews etc. So I will do it for next Monday's seminar speaker.

Hotel booking

Get a room at Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers for which I was waitlisted. This hotel stands just between the headquarter hotel and the all-suite interview hotel, probably the best hotel location other than the above two. My waiting-list stragegy worked! (See 26 September. See also 1 October for why staying near the headquarter hotel is important.)

Personal Website

Attend an orientation meeting for LSE economics PhD students who plan to go on the job market this academic year. I ask one question to the Placement Director (who happens to be my supervisor).

What should my personal website look like?

Answer: Purely academic in a minimalist way. Discard links to non-academic stuff including your (ie. my) blog. :-)

Mark, the superb administrative assistant at our department, recommends having your personal website because this allows students to update their job market paper and CV regularly. Emailing them to your department assistant to let him/her upload it on the department website takes time.

Introduction and Conclusion

Writing the Introduction has been a headache for me because I can come up with several ways of introducing my main finding that democratization in Africa reduces infant mortality via increased public health service delivery. I can begin by describing poverty in Africa, a hot issue during the last couple of years. I can begin by stating a grand question of whether democracy does any good to people. Or I can begin by talking about the recent economic literature on the effect of political institutions on socio-economic outcomes...

Chapter 15 of Booth, Colomb, and Williams (1995) discusses how to write the introduction for an academic paper. They mention three ways of begining the paper: (1) Open with a striking fact or quotation; (2) Open with a relevant anecdote; and (3) Open with a general statement.

I come to think that one of the most important facts underlying my paper is that many sub-Sahara African countries have been democratized. But few people know this fact: My supervisor was surprised by looking at the list of 24 African countries that introduced multiparty elections for executive office. Robin stresses the fact that few people know many African countries are now democracy. So I should probably "open with a striking fact". Actually, my first draft began with African experience of democratization. And Ikegami-kun, one of my friends interested in development economics, told me that the introduction in the first draft was well-written. Then I changed it in the third draft that I finished this Monday.

So I'm back to the original idea.

For the conclusion, Booth, Colomb, and Williams (1995) offer three ideas.

First, close with a new significance or application. If your research is motivated by a practical problem in the world, stress one additional importance of the problem you solved. Compared to other reasons for why readers should care about the problem in the introduction, this one must be "at a level more general" and "provocative enough." If your research is not motivated by a practical problem in the world, propose an application of your research result that is "some new and perhaps even unexpected benefit of clearer understanding that your solution might have."

Revision again, Introduction of the paper, LSHTM lecture

Email my supervisor and Tim if they want to read the current version of the paper or a version after another round of revision to incorporate Robin's comments. Both say they wait for another round of revision. So I start doing it.

As I have difficulty writing the introduction section, I ask my supervisor (when I bump into him) for any suggestion. He recommends this book (and here's some background of the book).

Attend the first of LSHTM's public health lecture series titled "Public Health and Millenium Development Goals". The lecturer mentions one interesting study: a randomized trial in Tanzania that shows the significant effect of matching the burden of diseases and the allocation of financial resources on child death. This implies that even without an increase in funding there is room for child health improvement. That might have been what happened after democratization in Africa.

Mock Job Talk Scheduled

A new academic year begins at LSE today. Every Monday lunchtime (1-2pm) is a PhD student seminar in the field of development economics. Today, we decide in which week each PhD student presents their research. As a job market candidate, I'm allowed to choose a slot first along with Marieke, another job market candidate this year. We received email from Tim already in which he mentions dates when he can come to attend the PhD seminar. My supervisor also emailed me saying that he cannot come to the seminar at one of the dates Tim mentioned. (See 25 September.) So I take 13 November and Marieke takes 6 November. This will be a mock job talk. We will be given one hour and a half, dress formally, and give a presentation on our research as if we gave a job talk.

Remember that there are three stages of selection for PhD students in economics to get a job of assistant professorship: an application in November, an interview at the ASSA Meeting in early January, and a job talk during the campus visit in mid-January to mid-February. A good performance during your job talk gets you a job.

Receive email from Tsuda-san at Institute of Developing Economies, a research centre in Tokyo. I have a couple of friends working there and I've asked them if I could present my research in front of Africanists at the Institute. They have accepted my request and the date of the seminar is decided to be 22 December. I will schedule my stay in Tokyo late December around that time to buy a winter suit and eat delicious Japanese foods immediately before the job market activity enters the crucial stage.

Finish the revision of the paper with lots of compromises and send a PDF file copy of it to the organizer of the fourth Development Economics Network PhD student seminar at Namur University, Belgium, on 27 October. If my paper is accepted, this will be a good opportunity for me to present my research outside LSE before going on the job market (see the end of this previous post). Fingers are crossed.

Receive email from Nagano, one of my best friends during the college days. It is an invitation to his wedding party early November. I need to decline this as it is impossible for going back to Tokyo in the middle of the whole preparation for going on the job market. But I reply to him saying that I want to celebrate when I'm back in Tokyo late December.

Why booking a hotel room in or near the ASSA meeting headquarters hotel is essential

Revise the paper from 11:30 am to 11:30 pm...

A finding on the Tuesday before the last was incorrect. With alternative measures of democracy, I still obtain similar results. Which is fine, anyway.

By browsing the AEA website, I figure out why booking a hotel room in or near the headquarter hotel is important (see 26 September). This document says,

"Job candidates have difficulty locating interviewers at the ASSA meetings. Interviewers do not know their room numbers prior to check-in and thus cannot tell candidates in advance."

Therefore, the AEA will set up the "Job Interview Suite & Room Information Table", where interviewers come and leave their room numbers, and candidates come and learn the locations of their interviews. And the Table will be set up at the headquarter hotel. Staying in or near the headquarter hotel thus makes it easy for you to locate where your interviews take place.

Revision...

Revise my paper at LSE from 3 to 8 pm. Doesn't seem to finish by next Monday...

Need to decline Kirsten's invitation to her house-warming party in the evening.

Last Friday of LSE Summer Holiday

Robin's various comments and Sylvia's suggestions yesterday make me think that the amount of time needed to revise the job market paper is more than I initially thought. So I cancel the seminar presentation slot next Friday in which I planned to talk about my new project. (I thought I could make my mind on the job market after next Friday's seminar---if my new project receives a good response, I would be better off by waiting one more year with the possibility of a better job market paper. But as the paper I've already written down has got good responses unexpectedly, the above plan makes no sense now.)

I need to forego the opportunity of going to tonight's V&A late opening with Sue or Kirsten. I need to revise my paper...

Third Reference

A morning meeting with Robin to hear his view on my paper. He says that the paper is worth going on the job market with. He then gives me several valuable comments to improve the paper.

Now that three faculty members recommend going on the job market, I have no reason for not doing so.

In the evening, I meet Sylvia, a malaria control specialist, through the introduction by Yuri-san. The purpose is to get familiar with the public health literature. I didn't want to be an "imperialist" economist (ie. an economist invading the territory of other academic disciplines) who does not know the common knowledge in the discipline he/she invades. It is a very useful meeting. She shows me a wide range of sources of information as well as some basic ideas of public health in Africa.

Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion

Start revising the paper. Noll (2005, p.17)---last year's job market guide for PhD candidates at Stanford University---convincingly argues for the importance of the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion of the job market paper. These are the parts of your job market paper that recruiting commitee members at universities actually read.

I think it's better to revise these three parts of the paper first. After revising the main text I will need to modify these parts anyway. So I will spend twice as long time as I would do if I revised these three parts only in the end.

The abstract must be short. The upper limit is 150 words. It must include the research question, the research method, and a brief statement of most important results. (Noll 2005, p.17)

I think that the introduction of a paper is more or less the same as the introduction of a seminar as described in Cox (2000): the question to be addressed, why this question is important, why the existing literature fails to address it properly, what your new and better research method is to address the question, and the summary of results.

More trickly is the conclusion. Cochrane (2005, pp.3-4) even argues that there needs no conclusion. But he suggests some idea for what should be written in the conclusion: a short paragraph or two acknowledging limitations. I think implications for future research and policies can also be included. In addition, David Levine (see under the heading "Stylistic issues") says the conclusion should be "accessible to the nonspecialist reader".

I forego the opportunity to go to Heyward Gallery with Cheyok and to a classical music concert with Katsumata-san tonight. Now I'm on the job market.