1. Academic Preparation

Before applying for graduate school in economics, you should prepare yourself academically. Here, I’m not talking about the courses you took as an undergraduate and any placement tests a graduate program requires. Instead, I am talking about two things: familiarizing yourself with the professional literature in economics and developing research interests. 

The Professional Literature: An Overview

During your PhD program, you’ll be reading articles in the professional literature and writing articles for that literature. So it’s important to understand what the professional literature is and its general organization, as well as how economics articles are typically structured. 

By professional literature I mean the kinds of articles you find in such journals as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. I do not mean articles found in, say, the Economist or Fortune or the Wall Street Journal, nor do I mean articles produced by think tanks, government agencies, special interest groups, and the like. What I mean are sophisticated, technical articles that normally require advanced training to understand and that deal with theory or empirical tests or methodological issues or some combination thereof. These articles are written by and for fellow specialists—economists on university faculties and, to a lesser extent, PhD economists in the private and public sector. They are not written for the general public. 

There are basically three kinds of articles in the professional literature: theoretical papers, empirical papers, and methodological papers. Theoretical papers build or modify a mathematical model (usually, of an economic situation such as a decision that has to be made) and demonstrate that the model is internally consistent. Empirical papers test an existing model with data. Methodological papers develop and test techniques (e.g., statistical inference or the identification of treatment effects) and the like. The three kinds of papers are not mutually exclusive; sometimes a paper will blend elements of all three.

In addition to the three kinds of articles I just described, another important kind of article is the literature review. The literature review can be a graduate student’s best friend. It takes stock of the important papers on a subject, summarizes what we know and don’t know about the subject, and indicates directions for future research. Literature reviews can be good sources of paper and dissertation topics. An excellent source of literature reviews is the Journal of Economic Literature, published by the American Economic Association.

Most of the professional literature is not directed primarily at some contemporary problem in the real world. That’s what journalism is for. Economics is different. It’s important to understand that. Many research projects take years to complete and, especially if they are funded by grants, are committed to a topic years in advance. So even if an economist wanted to drop everything and turn her attention to something in today’s headlines, she probably couldn't.

What, then, is the professional literature aimed at? It’s aimed at some empirical or methodological or theoretical problem important to the discipline. Yes, the paper might deal with the steel industry or school voucher programs or changes in Medicaid benefits; but the real interest will be in the way the paper approaches the subject—the model it uses, the data it uses, the methodological problem it solves or circumvents—in a way that is valued by the community of researchers of which you are a part.

To put this all another way, the typical paper, be it methodological, theoretical, or empirical, identifies some gap in or problem with existing studies on a topic and then attempts to fill the gap or deal with the problem.

If you have not browsed articles in such journals as the American Economic Review or Econometrica or any number of other, similar journals, please do so before beginning a PhD program. The articles in those journals represent the kind of work you will be expected to do or at least approximate in a graduate program. There’s no need to read the articles word for word. Instead, browse entire issues to get a sense of what economics papers look like. Do they look like the kinds of things you want to write? If not, you might want to reconsider graduate school.

The Look and Contents of a Typical Economics Article

The scholarly economics article is its own genre, with its own conventions. You should learn what those conventions are. How are articles in the professional literature typically constructed? What kinds of information do they contain? How is that information organized?

Economics articles are very much like research reports. That is, they take a reader through a particular train of thought and series of steps—the train of thought and series of steps that the economist ultimately used. They typically do not discuss the many dead ends, false starts, and miscalculations that are part of every research project.

Papers will begin with an abstract, a brief statement (150 words or so) of the important aspects of the paper. Someone who doesn’t know much about the profession will probably think that abstracts are written mechanically, according to a template. That is not the case. Economists are very particular about what information they put in an abstract. That is because abstracts serve a useful function: they represent the distinguishing components and features of a paper. Why is the paper useful? What contribution does it make? What makes it different from other studies on the topic? In many cases, the abstract will be the only part of a paper that someone might read.

Economics articles are composed of sections, with section heads. This makes the writing a little easier, as you don’t have to worry so much about transitions from one part of an argument to the next: the headings do that for you. The sections, moreover, are fairly standard and are usually as follows: an introduction; a literature review (although often the literature is reviewed in the introduction instead); a section describing the model; a section describing the data and methodology (if it’s an empirical paper); a section reporting the findings or, in the case of theoretical papers, several sections elaborating the model, along with theorems, propositions, lemmas, proofs, et al.; and a conclusion.

Empirical papers will almost certainly contain tables and figures. Usually, the first table describes the sample of observations. Subsequent tables will usually provide regression coefficients. Statistical programs like STATA make it easy to produce tables and figures. Having said that, the default formatting in most programs is not up to professional standards. For that reason, you should familiarize yourself with good principles of table and figure design. Consult any major style guide (Chicago, APA) for such principles. 

I mentioned above that most articles identify a gap or problem in the literature and then fill the gap or solve the problem. The gap or problem, and the way the paper deals with it, are first outlined in the introduction to the paper. The introduction usually gives the economist-writer the most trouble. The pieces of information it contains are usually standard: What question does the paper try to answer? Why is it a question worth asking? How does the paper differ from others on the same subject? With what data and methodology is the question answered? What are the main findings? But the order of the information, and the importance assigned to each piece of information (usually signaled by the length of the discussion), differ from paper to paper.

There then follow the fairly standard set of sections described above. The typical paper is 30–40 pages long, double-spaced. Usually, sources are listed in a reference list and are cited in the paper using the author-date system.

Because economics papers have a lot of math, most of them are written using LaTeX (pronounced lah-tek).

For a more detailed treatment, you may want to order a booklet I wrote about writing economics papers.

The Ecosystem of Journals

Economics is an article-based, as opposed to a book-based, discipline. Most of the professional literature you read will be in the form of working papers and journal articles. Working papers are unpublished—or at least not published in the usual sense of the word. They are usually early-stage versions of a paper that has been posted on a website—perhaps the author’s website, the website of a research network such as SSRN (the Social Science Research Network), or the website of a research center such as the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research). By posting the paper, the author usually hopes to receive suggestions for improving it. Posting the paper also puts it somewhere to which authors can direct colleagues. Articles, by contrast, are published in the traditional sense of the word. They are published in what are called journals, which are publications that appear at regular intervals (once a quarter, once a month) and contain the scholarly articles of a discipline.

Most published articles, by the way, have had a long gestation. They were presented at four or five conferences and read by a half dozen colleagues or so before they were submitted to a journal. It’s not uncommon for three or four years to pass from the beginning of a research project to a published paper.

There are essentially two kinds of journals: general interest journals and field journals. General interest journals publish different kinds of articles (theoretical, empirical, methodological) on all manner of subjects. Field journals publish either certain kinds of articles (e.g., theoretical) or articles on certain kinds of subjects (e.g., labor economics or urban economics). 

The first thing to know is that not all journals have the same status and prestige. There are so-called top journals, and then there’s the rest. The status and prestige of a journal are important for gaining tenure and standing in the profession. A publication in a top journal will count for a lot more in terms of your tenure case or your professional reputation than a publication in lesser journal.

So, how do journals acquire status and prestige? Up until recently, they did so mostly through reputation and favoritism. Reputation and favoritism still play a role. But today, the prestige of journals is measured largely by what is known as the impact factor of the journal. The impact factor measures how often articles published in a given journal are cited by other articles. The higher a journal’s impact factor, the better the journal is thought to be. Those are the top journals in the field and the ones you will want to publish in. 

Impact factors can be found through a electronic database called the Web of Science, under “Journal Citation Reports.” Any good library will subscribe to the database. The Web of Science can be confusing to use at first. A reference librarian should be helpful here.

All is not lost if you don’t publish in a top journal. Any paper you publish that is cited a lot will be to your credit, even if it is published in a lesser journal. Even so, a moderately cited paper published in a top journal will probably bring you more prestige than a frequently cited paper in a lesser journal.

The second thing to know is that some papers are considered “canonical” or “seminal” or “pioneering”: classic, foundational papers on a given topic that established long-standing ways of thinking about and approaching a subject. Especially if you are a young scholar, you will be expected to cite those papers when your subject overlaps with theirs. You will learn what these papers are as you read the literature on your topic.

Third and relatedly, certain economists are considered the leading figures in a given field (recall that a field is one of the many divisions of economics: labor economics, health economics, industrial organization, public economics, and so on). The leading figures may or may not have written the canonical papers on a subject; but you are still nevertheless expected to know and perhaps cite their work. You will learn who the leading figures are as you research a topic; generally, they will be the economists who are cited the most. Many of the leading figures have won one or both of the most prestigious prizes in economics: the Nobel Prize is one; the other is the John Bates Clark Medal, given every year by the AEA to the most promising economist under age 40.

I mentioned the AEA earlier. The AEA publishes a series of important journals that you should know about, for they perform certain useful functions in the field. The Journal of Economic Literature, for example, publishes comprehensive literature reviews that sum up a large and complicated body of research. The AEA’s flagship journal, the American Economic Review, publishes the papers and proceedings from the annual AEA conference, the biggest, most important conference of the year; the papers presented at the conference provide a good indication of where research is headed and which subjects are trending. 

Locating Articles in the Professional Literature

Most articles will be posted online as working papers or published in academic journals or both. (It is common to post a paper as a working paper in its early stages and then to later publish it in a journal.) Some may also appear in edited volumes—book-length collections of essays compiled by an editor or group of editors. (Edited volumes generally do not follow the rigorous peer-review standards that journals do, and thus their reputation has suffered in recent years.) Still others may be included in so-called handbooks. Handbooks are collections of articles that take stock of the current knowledge on a topic. The articles are thus similar to the literature reviews found in the Journal of Economic Literature. Handbooks function as reference books. One important handbook series is published by Elsevier and now numbers more than one hundred volumes.

How do you locate articles in the professional literature? The most comprehensive bibliography—perhaps too comprehensive—is EconLit, maintained by the American Economic Association. It is likely the only bibliography you will need. Your university will almost certainly subscribe to it. Other ways to locate articles are to consult the reference lists at the end of literature reviews and handbook entries, as well as the reference lists of the articles you read for your courses and research.

The major reference work in economics is the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, now online and continually updated and augmented. Some of the entries in the dictionary resemble the literature reviews in the Journal of Economic Literature, and each usually ends with a bibliography. Another major reference work that might be helpful is the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.

Developing a Research Interest

When you apply for graduate school, you will likely have to explain what subject or question you would like to research during your time in the program. You will not be held to this. The faculty understands that your research interests will change as you learn more about the discipline and the professional literature—not to mention more about yourself and the world around you.

Having said that, I can assure you that one of the most stressful experiences you will have is selecting a topic to write about. Most likely, you will first have to do that for a paper you will write toward the end of your second year. 

Finding a topic is not as simple as it sounds. For you’re not only picking a topic; you are also identifying a gap in or problem in the literature on your topic to fill or address. Many students might want to write something on education or the insurance industry or auctions—but that will take you only halfway there. The other half involves finding an angle on those subjects that no one has taken before—a new question, a new data set, a new model.

If you are writing an empirical paper, there will also be the matter of data. Data can often pose a formidable problem. Are the data available that will allow you to answer the question you would like to answer? The data may not simply exist; or if they exist, they may be proprietary and either inaccessible or cost money to obtain. Then you’ll have to clean the data. The process could easily take months.

All of this is to say that the sooner you can identify a topic, the better. Don’t put this off. And don’t just expect one to come to you—although one very well might, with proper preparation. After all, that’s how creativity works.

So how do you go about finding a topic? Begin with a self-inventory. What economic issues are you interested in? What economic issues are salient in your hometown or home country? What economic issues have affected you or your family? 

It may be helpful to think of a worthwhile topic as revolving around three things: the question you try to answer; the data set you might use (if an empirical paper); and the model or methodology you might use. Finding a topic—identifying a gap or problem in the literature—will often involve altering one of those things, keeping the others constant. So you might ask the same question and use the same model as a number of other papers, but might test the model with a different data set. Or you might use a standard model and data set to answer a new question. Or you might ask an old question, using old data, but with a new model. And so on.

Literature reviews such as those in the Journal of Economic Literature and handbooks can also help you identify a topic. Also, most papers end by suggesting lines for future research.

Above all, talk with the faculty—the sooner, the better. I’ve seen many students refrain from talking to faculty until they are halfway through a project, only to then learn from their professors that the project isn’t doable. Your professors will not hand you a topic (unless they involve you in one of their research projects); but if you come to them with a preliminary topic and a familiarity with the literature, they can tell you if it is worth pursuing and help you refine it.