I made (at least) 5 research-management mistakes as a young academic. You should avoid these.
1/ You should drop everything possible when you get an R&R and turn that right away.
Anup Malani
11.3K posts
Anup Malani
@anup_malani
Chief Economist, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. On leave: UChicago. Views here don’t reflect those of CMS. Papers posted & RT /ne endorsement.
- Single most under-appreciated chart for understanding health insurance policy in the US. Uninsured typically pay less than $5k out of pocket for care, regardless of their bill. So, even without formal health insurance, ppl effectively have a $5000 deductible insurance policy.
- Economics PhD programs should have a required descriptive statistics class. Not for learning to make pretty graphs. No theory. Just to learn facts that could get students’ creative juices thinking about big problems. Also so we don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees.
- 4 great tips for young academics I've gotten but regret not following enough: 1/Tom Sargent: Take 1 class per year even when ur a prof. Offsets the depreciation of the human capital you accumulated during grad school. Long term benefits in productivity >> short term time cost.
- How valuable is causal inference? Economists & statisticians embody high human capital and spend a ton of time showing (policy) X causes Y. What is the rate of return on this effort?
- A lot of economists have spent time explaining to Malthusians why the pie is not fixed, that humans grow the pie. Now we might need to spend time explaining to AI job doomers that, when tech increases capital productivity relative to labor, welfare need not fall. Lower wage isEvery single AI leader knows that AI, if not stopped soon, will eliminate the vast majority of current human jobs. Not a single one of them has any plausible idea how society will function after that. And not one of them seem to care. News flash: the AI companies will never
- Two important charts for understanding why US lags Europe in longevity. 1/ It's behavior, not healthcare: US infant mortality is higher in the months after a baby goes home from the hospital. Suggesting it's at-home behavior, not bad healthcare that is responsible.
- I am excited to announce that I am starting a new position this week as Chief Economist at the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. I'll be on leave from the University of Chicago. The usual disclaimer applies: Any views I express here are not intended to reflect the
- Replying to @anup_malani2/ Work on fewer projects. I invested in too many projects. My biggest fear was having no papers to work on or in the pipeline. But that meant I was making smaller contributions because I never had a clear plate and time to think deeply.
- I just learned that Mick Jagger got an undergraduate degree in economics from LSE. How is there not a Mick Jagger Professor of Economics at LSE? If there is one, how is this not the most coveted professorship in economics.
- Why have economics papers gotten so long over time (compared to say physics or comp sci or stats or biology papers)? I do law and also economics. When I started 20 years ago, Econ profs used to mock law profs for writing 80pp papers. Now they all do it!
- Replying to @anup_malani4/ Quit projects earlier. Borrow an idea from SV: fail early and often. Check prospects for success early. (Steve Levitt told me: if you can't make a good Fig 1 with raw data, you won't convince a lot of ppl.) Invest a lot only in projects that show prospects for success.
- When I was in grad school @UChi_Economics 20 yrs ago, I didn't learn what it means to be a successful academic. 🧵 I was "taught" the goal is to get a top 5 (or a Nobel 😂). I didn't learn how to get citations, be an influential academic or production fn for getting a prize.
- I do a lot of interdisciplinary work. Here are 4 hard lessons I've learned. They may help you be more successful (than me) if you want to work across fields.
