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This is: Writing about my job: Economics Professor, published by Kevin Kuruc on the AI Alignment Forum.
I am following the advice of Aaron Gertler and writing a post about my job. 80000 hours has independent career path pages dedicated to getting an economics PhD and doing academic research, but the specifics of my personal experience may be of interest. Plus, it was fun to recount!
Summary of Current Role
Tenure track professor of economics (since 2019) at large state school in the US (University of Oklahoma; Boomer Sooner!)
Its not MIT, but I have very bright and active colleagues. Some of you may even know of Joan Hamory of deworming fame.
I research macroeconomic topics, primarily questions that are, at least loosely, within Global Priorities Research (GPR).
This focus has lead to frequent engagement with the Global Priorities Institute as well as some folks at Open Philanthropy (though the latter has been very limited and informal so far).
My Background and Path to Applying
Went to a not-very-prestigious, but large, research university (Temple University; Go Owls!)
In undergrad I couldn't get enough of my math and economics courses and was (probably) the best economics student at my University while I was there. This allowed me a lot of access to faculty.
Neither parent went to college, so I was lucky that a professor pushed the idea of a PhD. That was not on my radar (nor did I understand it).
I also enjoyed researching my honors thesis, learning how to write code, and the development economics internship I had in Cape Town. These made me confident a PhD was a good future move.
My only useful extra curricular was a job tutoring math at the university learning center (this honed my only marketable skill - math - and I now recommend it to my students with mathematical aptitude).
I then went directly from undergrad to a graduate school ranked ~25 the US (University of Texas at Austin; Hook 'Em!).
I considered taking a job as a research assistant at a Federal Reserve Bank to improve my grad placement. Ultimately I decided the 2 year life-cost was not worth it. Despite the popularity of that route, I very much continue to think I made a good decision in my case.
At Texas I worked in the macroeconomics group, but also had a development economics co-advisor. I sat a bit awkwardly between fields.
In my 3rd year of graduate school I became very interested in more (not-yet-longtermist) EA ideas.
I figured a job at an international organization would be a good path to impact and ended up landing an internship at the IMF.
This internship probably only helped a bit towards my current academic life, but I learned a lot, enjoyed it, and can imagine scenarios where this did help land me in an international organization.
Getting my Current Job
There is plenty of advice on navigating the PhD economics job market, so I won't recount my general strategy here.
If you're an undergrad instead looking for PhD application advice, check out the GPI mentoring program!
Personally, I would have been happy at an academic job or a policy making organization (preferably something like IMF or World Bank). I ended up with offers from (i) my current academic institution and (ii) the Reserve Bank of India in their research department.
The stark difference in these offers fairly represents the tightrope I was trying to walk between (i) showing I could do academic-style research (ii) working on applied policy questions and (iii) starting to get interested in GPR-style topics.
I honestly feel like I didn't blend these very well; yet somehow I managed to land a job I was happy with. I'd be willing to talk with anyone entering the economics job market in the near future about my thoughts on this challenge.
Also, I was on the hiring committee at my University this last year, so I now have a clearer understandin...
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