Sunday, October 25, 2020

Cool Data Alert: Historical Data

I haven't done any work using historical data, but I must say I am intrigued! This IZA paper describes some of the most commonly used  data sources (well, by economists). They are broadly classified as geographical data, ethnographic data (really cool!!!) and Censuses. For each group, the authors "outline the issues they raise and also point out which methodological advances allow economists to overcome or minimize these problems." 

If you're a history buff and you're looking for a dissertation topic, take a peek. 

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Stata Tip: Quick and Easy Code for Making Plots

Yes, I've said this. A picture is worth a thousand words. Or in our case, a picture is worth a thousand numbers in a table. The DIME folks at the World Bank have just put together a super useful resource on how to quickly code all of the different types of plots you may want to make. Click on the you plot you want to make and up comes the code that is used to make it! No need to to spend hours googling how to do this for each potential plot. What an amazing public good! 



P.S.I put the the pictures up just to make my blog pretty. To get the actual code, click on the link above. Or here

Saturday, October 10, 2020

10 Commandments for How to Give a Seminar

Kjetil Storesletten gave a talk with the commandments for giving a seminar--maybe specifically a job talk. You can see the slides here and watch the talk here

Stating the question you are asking very clearly and at the beginning of the talk is so important (Commandment 2). Yes, this is of course always important but maybe especially important during an economics talk so that you don't keep getting interrupted with questions that are not really relevant to the question you are trying to answer. The fewer of those "out there" questions you get, the more likely you will be to have well prepared answers to the questions (see Commandment 10). 

I would also emphasize Commandment 4: Show the value-added of your paper. Sometimes newbies want to 'over-emphasize' their work by 'de-emphasizing' prior related work. This is not only dishonest, but you may find yourself fighting unnecessary battles. For example, if some well-respected economist has already used your identification strategy to study some other outcome and that paper is now published in a solid journal, then your audience may not make you work as hard to defend that broad identification strategy. Instead, they will focus their questions on why it may (or may not) be appropriate for your particular application. This is probably a much easier battle to fight and it is the battle you should be prepared for. 

Good luck! 

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Stata Tip: Best Advice on Writing Dofiles

Yes, I know you're excited to see the results of your regression. Go ahead and be sloppy with your coding. You probably will make mistakes. You'll go back to fix them. Maybe that's fine. But at some point, go through these J-Pal instructions and guidelines on how to clean your data. The big rules: 

  1. Document decisions
  2. Never overwrite the original/raw data file
Other gems include: Look at the distribution of every variable you use in your analysis (do you have 500 year olds? Are the missing values set to 99?) Do you see anything suspicious? The more you know about the data, the better. 

Also, use Stata's help command to learn more about "mvdecode" and "subinstr."  And remember to rename variables so that you can tell what they are by looking at the variable (hint: a dummy variable called "male" is more helpful than one called "sex"). Label the values so that you don't have to keep going back to the codebook. 

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Message to My Students

I just saw this on twitter, and it is absolutely true. I forget to say it, I know, but I am very often very impressed with your work. So impressed that I want to help make it as great as it can possibly be. Please do keep sending me your paper drafts. Do the best job that you can. Fix the typos you catch, and remember to include a date and page numbers. But remember that I don't expect perfection in your drafts. After all, they are drafts