I have very little original advice to offer to my advisees.
The best I can do is pass along advice from others.
After some notes on protocol, I link to resources that I have found helpful.
Meeting with me
- Attend our student working group. Felix Tintelnot, Rodrigo Adao, and I run a working group for students studying international trade and economic geography. You can learn a lot from other students' presentations and our comments on them.
- Bring an agenda to meetings. 30-minute meetings are sufficient to discuss about three substantive points in meaningful detail. Write up a page of notes beforehand to ensure that we discuss those points.
- Follow through after meetings. At the beginning of a meeting, tell me what you did to implement or address concrete suggestions I made at the previous meeting.
Presenting
Coding
Working
Writing
The job market
- At least one year before you'll be on the market, read John Cawley's very comprehensive Guide and Advice For Economists
on the US Junior Academic Job Market.
It outlines what you need to do by application time in November, interviews in January, flyouts in January-February, decisions in March, etc.
The process will be much less intimidating if you see the big picture from the beginning rather than learning about the market at the last minute.
- You need to have your main research results in hand by June. You will spend the summer writing, not producing new results. The typical student underestimates the difficulty of writing clear prose for general-interest readers. Give a full draft of your paper to your advisors in June. Sharing something in September is too late.
- For your opening pitch in an interview (or for an entire elevator ride), Owen highlights good examples from Justin Wolfers.
- The European market differs in some ways. See David Schindler's Guide to the European Job Market for examples.