“I believe that some research interests are much greater in expected utility without a career cost. [....] From my experience most PhD students choose their topic based on their subjective degree of interest and sense of comparative advantage, rather than adequately predicting the academic job market. ”
Maybe econ is different from poli sci, but my experience is that grad students are extremely attuned to what the academic job market rewards, and if they don’t start out that way, their advisors eventually push them in that direction. How about choosing research topics that do have a career cost? Those areas tend to be quite neglected. Since the academic market rewards difficult, technical work, the sort of work that doesn’t do well on the job market can also be fairly tractable. In my final year of my PhD, I asked faculty what they would recommend working on if you want to do good and don’t care about career advancement. Their suggestions included
Replications. How common and prestigious this is depends on the field, but published replications remain rare in econ. Since replications don’t require originality or great technical skill, they aren’t rewarded by the academic job market. A replication could be an exact replica of a lab experiment, a re-analysis of a data set, or checking that code does what it’s supposed to. This kind of work can be influential and get attention in the popular press even if it isn’t publishable in an academic journal. (See one example here, or the infamous Reinhart and Rogoff spreadsheet error.) You’ll probably have to do this for a class, but few of those coursework replications ever get published.
Meta-analyses—also common in some fields and not in others.
I would guess that review articles and syntheses of others’ ideas are also under-done, but tenured faculty have a strong comparative advantage in that kind of work.
I’d also love to see some meta-research on what researchers believe to be the highest-impact topics to study. Maybe you could ask faculty in your department what they would recommend an altruist work on? I wish I’d spoken to more of my professors about this since their suggestions were invaluable.
Thanks for the comment. I’ve decided the most important thing is to learn to do my own expected value analysis for research programs.
Maybe econ is different from poli sci, but my experience is that grad students are extremely attuned to what the academic job market rewards, and if they don’t start out that way, their advisors eventually push them in that direction.”
I’ve been exploring this, and it appears to be a difference between the disciplines. Not sure why yet.
Since the academic market rewards difficult, technical work, the sort of work that doesn’t do well on the job market can also be fairly tractable.”
This makes sense. For example, looking at why some countries start charter cities and some do not would be very qualitative and poorly rewarded. But it would be really high-QALY.
Descriptive work
That actually makes a lot of sense. There could be some great descriptive work on aid which is non-causal.
Replications get okay rewards in Poli-Sci, since you might find a different method decision and be able to publish a new results. I plan to do lots of these.
I’d also love to see some meta-research on what researchers believe to be the highest-impact topics to study. Maybe you could ask faculty in your department what they would recommend an altruist work on? I wish I’d spoken to more of my professors about this since their suggestions were invaluable.
Thanks for this advice. It is valuable and I have already started doing it. Responses vary by professor. Some of them are like “utility...for people...we’ve never asked that question in this field. I have no idea” and some are like “yes of course, here are my thoughts”. As a culture, political science is surprisingly non-activist compared to economics, in the sense that many pol scientists take no normative positions. Lots to learn about here.
Hi, I did an econ PhD with similar motivations.
“I believe that some research interests are much greater in expected utility without a career cost. [....] From my experience most PhD students choose their topic based on their subjective degree of interest and sense of comparative advantage, rather than adequately predicting the academic job market. ”
Maybe econ is different from poli sci, but my experience is that grad students are extremely attuned to what the academic job market rewards, and if they don’t start out that way, their advisors eventually push them in that direction. How about choosing research topics that do have a career cost? Those areas tend to be quite neglected. Since the academic market rewards difficult, technical work, the sort of work that doesn’t do well on the job market can also be fairly tractable. In my final year of my PhD, I asked faculty what they would recommend working on if you want to do good and don’t care about career advancement. Their suggestions included
Descriptive work. David Deming’s work on “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market” is a great example and did happen to publish well, but many attempts to document trends without proving their cause do not.
Replications. How common and prestigious this is depends on the field, but published replications remain rare in econ. Since replications don’t require originality or great technical skill, they aren’t rewarded by the academic job market. A replication could be an exact replica of a lab experiment, a re-analysis of a data set, or checking that code does what it’s supposed to. This kind of work can be influential and get attention in the popular press even if it isn’t publishable in an academic journal. (See one example here, or the infamous Reinhart and Rogoff spreadsheet error.) You’ll probably have to do this for a class, but few of those coursework replications ever get published.
Meta-analyses—also common in some fields and not in others.
I would guess that review articles and syntheses of others’ ideas are also under-done, but tenured faculty have a strong comparative advantage in that kind of work.
I’d also love to see some meta-research on what researchers believe to be the highest-impact topics to study. Maybe you could ask faculty in your department what they would recommend an altruist work on? I wish I’d spoken to more of my professors about this since their suggestions were invaluable.
Thanks for the comment. I’ve decided the most important thing is to learn to do my own expected value analysis for research programs.
I’ve been exploring this, and it appears to be a difference between the disciplines. Not sure why yet.
This makes sense. For example, looking at why some countries start charter cities and some do not would be very qualitative and poorly rewarded. But it would be really high-QALY.
That actually makes a lot of sense. There could be some great descriptive work on aid which is non-causal.
Replications get okay rewards in Poli-Sci, since you might find a different method decision and be able to publish a new results. I plan to do lots of these.
Thanks for this advice. It is valuable and I have already started doing it. Responses vary by professor. Some of them are like “utility...for people...we’ve never asked that question in this field. I have no idea” and some are like “yes of course, here are my thoughts”. As a culture, political science is surprisingly non-activist compared to economics, in the sense that many pol scientists take no normative positions. Lots to learn about here.