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I was fortunate to be interviewed some months ago about my forthcoming book by Alex Hollingsworth (Indiana University) and Sebastian Tello-Trillo (University of Virginia) for their podcast, The Hidden Curriculum.

During our hour-long conversation, we also talked about music, my workflow, some of my recent research, and cookbooks. Listen below:

E56 – How to write a diversity statement with Patrick Button – The Hidden Curriculum

Here's the blurb:In this episode we talk with Patrick Button about audit studies, diversity statements, and navigating administrative roles in academia. Patrick is an Associate Professor of Economics at Tulane University and Executive Director of the Conley Alexander Institute for Data Science. His research focuses on discrimination and labor markets, and his current work uses audit field experiments to study barriers to mental health care access — examining how race, ethnicity, trans identity, and insurance type affect whether therapists respond to appointment requests.Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Ohio State University. HHenry Morris is our main editor. He is a student at the University of Virginia studying computer science and mathematics.In this episode we discussed:Audit field experiments and what they reveal about discrimination in mental health care accessHow Medicaid status affects therapists' responsiveness to appointment requestsBalancing a half-administrative, half-research role — what works and what doesn'tAI scheduling tools like Motion and Reclaim, and why they may not work for everyoneHow to write a strong diversity statement for academic job applicationsThe legislative push to ban DEI statements, and what gets lostWhen cover letters matter — and when they don't📚 Resources mentioned:"How You Can Work to Improve the Climate for LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession" by Hoover, Washington & Bayer — Journal of Economic Perspectives: [link]Ben Harrell's working paper on conversion therapy bans, suicidality, and mental health: [link]Patrick's website: patrickbutton.com🎮 Recommendations of the week:📄 Patrick's rec: Read the Hoover, Washington & Bayer JEP article on improving the economics profession for Black, Latinx, and Native American economists🚲 Alex's rec: Ass Savers — lightweight clip-on mud guards that keep you dry when biking in the rain🍽️ Sebastian's rec: Keep your kitchen counter as clear as possible — fewer objects on the counter, better your life

1. E56 – How to write a diversity statement with Patrick Button 01:03:01
2. E55 – What is Git, Github, and should I use it? With Andrea Moro 52:00
3. E54 -How to Negotiate with Matt Notowidigdo 01:02:15
4. E53 – How to work with large organization to implement research and policy with Mushfiq Mobarak 53:25
5. E52 – Working in Global and U.S. Economic Policy with Sandile Hlatshwayo 57:26

There is less than one month until my book Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School–But Didn’t comes out on May 10.

One of the things that most people don’t realize about the book-publishing business is the importance of pre-orders, which act as an early signal of interest in a given book. If you are planning on buying the book, I would like to encourage you to pre-order it here, which will ensure that you receive the book on the day it is released (see the expected delivery date for my own pre-order below), and your credit card will not get charged until your copy of the book ships.

You have pre-ordered your own copy but know someone who is about to enter grad school to do quantitative social science, is already in grad school doing so, or is about to start a position doing so? This would make for a great gift for them.

Not the most elegant of titles, I realize, but that is nevertheless the title of a new working paper which Online Agricultural and Resource Economics Seminar co-founder and co-organizer Jeff Bloem and I recently finished drafting. Here is the abstract:

In May 2020, in the early days of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we launched the Online Agricultural and Resource Economics (OARES) seminar in an effort to maintain a semblance of normalcy for scholars in the field of agricultural and applied economics. The goal of the OARES was to break down the privilege barrier in two ways: (i) by featuring for the most part research by junior, female, or minority scholars, and (ii) by bringing frontier research to those who may not have had access to a regular seminar series prior to the pandemic. Against those goals, we discuss the contribution of the OARES to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in agricultural and applied economics.

In the paper, we first analyze attendance data for 70 regular OARES presentations, finding that there is no apparent tradeoff between attendance on the one hand and the gender, race, or seniority of the speaker, and further finding that there is no relationship between attendance and a talk’s general topic area (i.e., development, environmental, or food and agricultural economics).

Second, we discuss where the 17 papers presented at OARES that are already published have been published, which includes top general journals (e.g., the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of the European Economic Association, and the Review of Economics and Statistics), top field journals (e.g., the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and the Journal of Development Economics), as well as some general science journals (e.g., Environmental Research Letters and Nature Human Behavior).

Finally, we discuss some of the lessons learned from two years of the OARES. Those lessons are that (i) there is a demand for diversity, (ii) there is no trade-off between diversity and merit, (iii) people can and do adapt to new circumstances, (iv) research topic is unrelated to attendance, (v) attendance follows predictable seasonal patterns, (vi) the marginal benefit of organizing the OARES exceeds the marginal cost, and (vii) we can foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging by building community.

This is very much a first draft of this paper, and so we welcome comments and suggestions.