Resources for researchers
The hidden curriculum — what PhD programs rarely teach but researchers need: writing, presenting, coding, managing stress, navigating the job market, and increasingly, working with AI tools. Send missing resources to claes.backman@gmail.com.
My guides to AI coding agents
Where to run agentic AI — a quick tour. A short overview of the surfaces — VS Code, terminal, desktop, web, mobile — to help you pick where to start.
Claude Code in VS Code. A hands-on guide to setting up and using Claude Code inside VS Code for empirical research.
Codex in VS Code. The same workflow, but built around OpenAI's Codex CLI.
Codex vs Claude Code — a practical comparison. Side-by-side notes on how the two agents differ in everyday research use.
Linking VS Code and Overleaf. Sync your LaTeX papers through GitHub or Dropbox so you can edit locally with AI tools while coauthors stay on Overleaf.
My curated tips
I share a brief personal guide to doing research on Substack, and I keep a deck of presentation slides with tips for writing and doing research.
People whose resource pages I've learned from:
- Alex Albright — R and data science and undergrad thesis writing
- Masayuki Kudamatsu — Tips for economists
- Econ Grad Advice
- Ryan B. Edwards — Resources
- Plamen Nikolov — Resources
- Shanjun Li — PhD resources
- Jennifer Doleac — Resources and the Economics of Crime database
- AEA mentoring links
- Arthur Turell — Coding for economists
- Dominika Langenmayr — Teaching slides on writing
- Kevin Bryan — Guide to AI, Git, and LaTeX
Doing research
Paul Niehaus on the transition from student to independent scholar — researchers often experience a dramatic loss of structure when the dissertation ends.
Writing skills
Editor Amitabh Chandra notes that clear and accessible writing, including an explanation of where the paper breaks down, is the strongest predictor of acceptance. Empirical work by Jan Feld, Corinna Lines, and Libby Ross shows writing quality significantly affects publication outcomes.
Concentration
Cal Newport's Deep Work and Study Hacks blog, on attention management in the age of email and social media.
Staying current
Subscribe to NBER, IZA, and RePEc working-paper alerts, plus journal notifications. Finance researchers: the Insights for Young Researchers in Finance newsletter.
Data visualization
Kieran Healy's Data Visualization, Andrew Heiss's course, and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham's best-figures page.
Workflow
Organize data construction, graphs, and results so you can return to a project six months later without frustration. Asjad Naqvi's Stata workflow generalizes well. Jeppe Druedahl has good Python and coding notes.
Talk to junior faculty
Not just about topics. Ask about practical research matters — how they organize projects, handle referees, choose journals, and split time. Their perspective is often more actionable than senior faculty's.
AI, LLMs, Claude Code & Cursor
- Benjamin Golub — Modern AI for Economics Research: An Overview of Tools (Princeton)
- Erkmen Aslim and Emily Beam — Thinking with Agents (bootcamp on AI tools for teaching and research)
- Olivia Moore — Cursor + Claude Code: How to build an agentic workspace
- Steven Ge — Claude Code for Everyone
- Sankalp Shubham — A Guide to Claude Code 2.0 and using coding agents
- Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna — My Claude Code Setup
- Aniket Panjwani — Using Claude Code with Stata
- Brian Heseung Kim — Data Analyst Augmentation Framework · intro thread
- Scott Cunningham — Claude Code 2.0: Faculty Adoption of AI, Decks and Folders, and Non-Trivial Security Risks
- Jared Black — An AI-Assisted Research Flow
- Matthias Mahlendorf — Prompt for consistency checks before submissions
- Aniket Panjwani — Using Git with Claude Code
- Aakash Gupta — Complete Guide to NotebookLM
- Aniket Panjwani — AI Agents for Economics Research
- Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham on Claude Code — getting started, from an empty folder to a figure, from EDGAR filings to a structured database
Claude Code skills
Writing
Books
- Marc Bellemare — Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School — But Didn't
- Deirdre McCloskey — Economical Writing · summary
- Steven Pinker — The Sense of Style
- Strunk & White — The Elements of Style
Guides and articles
- Arthur Turell — Writing Papers
- John Cochrane — Writing Tips for Ph.D. Students
- Claudia Sahm — Good writing matters in economics!
- Marc F. Bellemare — How to Write Applied Papers in Economics
- Anne Lamott — Shitty First Drafts (from Bird by Bird)
- Plamen Nikolov — Writing Tips for Economics Research Papers
- Keith Head — The Introduction Formula
- Marc F. Bellemare — The Conclusion Formula
- Claudia Sahm — We need to talk MORE (job market paper advice)
- Jesse M. Shapiro — Four Steps to an Applied Micro Paper
- Mike Munger — On writing a dissertation
- Steven Pinker — Why Academics Stink at Writing
- David Evans — How to Write the Introduction of Your Development Economics Paper
- Florian M. Hollenbach — Academic Writing: Exercises and Guides
- Ed Glaeser — How to write a theory paper
- Hal Varian — How to Build an Economic Model in Your Spare Time
Publishing, refereeing, discussing
- Alex Edmans — Learnings From 1,000 Rejections
- Marc F. Bellemare — How to Publish in Academic Journals
- Daniel S. Hamermesh — The Young Economist's Guide to Professional Etiquette
- Campbell R. Harvey — Reflections on Editing the Journal of Finance, 2006–2012
- Craig A. Depken, II — Tips on How to Get Published
- CSWEP — How to Get Published in an Economics Journal
- Kwan Choi — How to publish in top journals
- Berk, Harvey & Hirshleifer — How to Write an Effective Referee Report
- JEEA — Ask the Editor, with Juuso Välimäki
- Plamen V. Nikolov — Referee report template
- James J. Choi — How to Give a Good Paper Discussion
- Ricardo Perez-Truglia — Tips for writing a POSITIVE referee report
Workflow, graphs, tables
General workflow
- Brandon Zborowski — Research workflow tips
- Asjad Naqvi — The Stata workflow guide
- Daniel M. Sullivan — Best practices when writing code
- Athalye, Ortiz & Gjensgset — Missing Semester of Your CS Education
Tables
- Asjad Naqvi — The Stata-to-LaTeX guide
- Jonathan A. Schwabish — Ten Guidelines for Better Tables
- Luke Stein — Tips for generating Stata output for LaTeX · gallery
- Stata cheat sheets
- Jörg Weber — Automated table generation in Stata + LaTeX
- Alessandro Martinello — How to export tables from Stata to LaTeX
Graphs
- Arthur Turell — Narrative data visualisation (Python)
- Andrew Heiss — Data visualization course (R)
- Asjad Naqvi — Stata graph tips for academic articles
- Kieran Healy — Data Visualization (R)
- Eric Zwick — A Graph is Worth a Thousand Citations
- Nicholas T. Davis — A 2019 New Year's resolution for Stata users
- Daniel Bischof — Stata figure schemes
- Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham — Best figure page
- Chiu Yu Ko — TikZ guide for LaTeX graph drawing
Tip. Install the lean scheme package for clean Stata graphs.
Presentations
- Jon Schwabish — Better Presentations · PolicyViz
- Julie Zhiyu Fu — How to Make Effective Slides
- David Ubilava — Academic presenting: how to get it right
- Jon Schwabish — Ending the "Thank You" ending slide
- Jesse M. Shapiro — How to give an applied micro talk
- Shengwu Li — How to give an economic theory talk
- Rachael Meager — Public speaking for academic economists
- Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham — Beamer tips
- Carmine Gallo — How to rehearse for an important presentation
- Marc F. Bellemare — 22 tips for conference and seminar presentations
- Steve Most — The cognition and emotion of effective presentations
Tip. Have fellow PhD students take notes during your own practice talks. Solicit feedback from colleagues beforehand.
Productivity & finding ideas
- Lasse Heje Pedersen — How to Succeed in Academia or Die Have Fun Trying
- Cal Newport — Deep Work · Study Hacks blog
- Steve Pavlina — 7 rules for maximizing creative output
- Ben Olken — My Epic Failures
- Ariel Rubinstein — 10 Q&A: experienced advice for "lost" graduate students
- Luke Taylor — Tips for Finance Ph.D. students
- Amy Finkelstein — An unofficial guide to trying to do empirical work
- Ivan Werning — thread on new ideas
- Frank Schilbach — presentation on research ideas
- Sally Hudson — on great questions
ChatGPT & large language models
Being a researcher
- Claudia Goldin — The Economist as Detective
- Esther Duflo — The Economist as Plumber (AER · preprint)
- Martin A. Schwartz — The importance of stupidity in scientific research
Getting an overview of the literature
Networking
- Claudia Sahm — Economists must build a better community
- Jennifer Doleac — The Hidden Curriculum on networking
- Sahil Bloom — How to write a cold email
Coding & website building
- McDermott, Butts & Huntington-Klein — Translating Stata to R
- Arthur Turell — Coding for Economists
- Alexander C. Lembcke — Introduction to Stata · advanced topics
- Todd Jones — Quick Stata tips
- Jack Blun — Applied Econometrics in Stata
- Ljubica Ristovska — Coding for economists
- Gentzkow & Shapiro — Code and Data for the Social Sciences
- How To Make A Pie: Reproducible Research for Empirical Economics
- Maximilian Kasy — Useful Computational Resources
- Grant McDermott — Data science for economists
- Oetiker, Partl, Hyna & Schlegl — The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX
- Hans-Martin von Gaudecker — Setting up a Python environment
- Michael Stepner — Coding style guide · Git vs Dropbox
- Esma Özer — All-in-One: VS Code for Economists
- Arieda Muço — Overleaf + Git integration
- Kevin H. Wilson — So you want to build an academic website?
- Hugo Blox — Build your online resume
Computational resources
Stress & being a grad student
- Chris Woolston — Faking it
- Jennifer Walker — There's an awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about
- Valerie Valdes — Smart kids eventually grow up
- Matthew Pearson — How to survive your first year of graduate school
- Diana Leonard — A woman's guide to doctoral studies
- Maggie Berg — The Slow Professor
- Chris Brooks — Your PhD in accounting or finance
Job market
- Kelsi G. Hobbs — job market materials · GitHub templates
- Claudia Goldin & Lawrence Katz — The Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper
- Johannes Pfeifer — Job Market Resources
- European Economic Association — Guide for European candidates
- Science — How to put your best foot forward in faculty interviews
- Cover-letter replicator & tracking spreadsheet
- Michaela Carlana — Guide for European job market candidates
- David Schindler — Your job market package · Interview & flyout
- Antonio Cabrales — General overview of the economics job market
Teaching
- Panos Ipeirotis — Listening to My Students at Scale
- EEA Education Committee — resources
- Paul Bloom — Informal teaching advice
- Ted Gioia — My 10 Rules for Public Speaking
Have a teaching resource that should be here? Email claes.backman@gmail.com.
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