Marc F. Bellemare Posts

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:

E49 – Insights from an Editor with Nathaniel Hendren – The Hidden Curriculum

In this episode, we talk with Nathaniel Hendren about his work in economics and policy evaluation. Nathaniel is a professor of economics at MIT and the founding director of Opportunity Insights and Policy Impacts. He has received prestigious awards such as the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the Sloan Fellowship. Nathaniel is also the lead co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and an associate editor at American Economic Review Insights. The conversation covers various topics, including: 1. Nathaniel's background and work with Policy Insights and Policy Impacts2. The concept of marginal value of public funds (MVPF) and its importance in policy evaluation3. Challenges in identifying and communicating policy impacts4. Nathaniel's role as an editor and advice for young scholars on journal submissions5. Tips for refereeing and understanding journal processes6. The importance of accountability and timeliness in academic publishing Recommendations of the Week:Nathaniel recommends a recent paper on the impact of SSI on crime by Manasi Deshpande and Michael Mueller-SmithAlex recommends the email client Spark for better email managementSebastian recommends transferring Chase points to Hyatt for affordable hotel stays.

1. E49 – Insights from an Editor with Nathaniel Hendren 58:39
2. E48 – The landscape of queer research, data, and opportunities 54:07
3. E47 – How to access restricted data with Sarah Miller 52:35
4. E46 – Professional misconduct and plagarism with Gary Hoover 49:47
5. E45 – Founding the ⁠Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race (WISER)⁠ with Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe 47:23

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.