Advising

Student Supervision and Letters

Before Asking
Whether you are asking me to be your advisor or to write a recommendation letter, I expect that you have taken at least one of my courses, worked with me on research (as a co-author or research assistant), or met with me on a few occasions to discuss your research interests.

Advising
I supervise students working on topics related to development economics, public economics, and political economy, and I am open to other topics in other areas of applied economics, broadly defined. I am interested in empirical projects using quasi-experimental methods or field and survey experiments.

If I agree to advise you, I expect you to meet with me regularly to present your progress, either one-on-one or in group meetings when I advise several students, and to keep to the milestones we agree upon.

Recommendation Letters
I am happy to write letters to support your case for academic conferences, graduate programs, and job applications. Please ask at least 4 weeks before your deadline. In order to write a detailed letter, I may ask you to provide additional materials.

I can write the strongest letters when I can speak in detail about your abilities without reservation. Thus, I give priority to students I have advised over a substantial period. Requests from other students are considered case by case.

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Resources for Students

It takes a village to become a scholar. These resources come from the people who helped me along the way. The list below will be continuously updated as I find helpful information. Also, please do not hesitate to let me know if there are dead links.

Research Mindset

• Start by asking “Assuming that I had no data, financial, and ethical constraints, what is the one research question that I want to study?” This helps define who you are as a researcher and identify new projects (I thank Suresh Naidu for asking me this question at our first meeting).
• Tatyana Deryugina has published an e-book on how to train yourself as an economist at different stages of your career.
• Donald Davis’s Questions you should be asking yourselves as you write a paper and prepare your presentation.
• I am beginning to learn that even as an empiricist, starting from theoretical models helps. Here are the lecture slides from Patrick François on connecting empirics to theory from the BREAD-IGC virtual PhD-level course on political economy 2026.
• In the social sciences, the paper does not have to be perfect. In fact, Joel Mokyr once said that “perfect is the enemy of the very good”.

Coding and Other Technical Skills

• You will be using various tools, such as Stata, R, Python, and GIS programs as you embark on an empirical project. You will inevitably run into a trial-and-error phase that you need to overcome to become proficient at these tools.
• Work with a good text editor like VSCode or Sublime Text to write code and LaTeX documents.
• Use a version control platform like GitHub.
• Principles of writing good code from Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro.

Writing

• Writing is one of the most difficult challenges for a researcher. To make life a bit simpler, here are some guides from Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz and John Cochrane.
• One book that I still keep with me to this day is The Little Book of Research Writing by Varanya Chaubey.
• Another useful book on academic writing is The Craft of Research, recommended by my advisor Rodrigo Soares.
• My writing style is also influenced somewhat by The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.
• Use a reference manager like Zotero to save time and effort in maintaining your references.

Presentation

• I generally recommend presenting at external seminars or conferences to get feedback from different angles. You will learn a lot, and it helps extend your paper significantly.
• In terms of organizing your talk and slides, refer to Kim Ruhl’s notes on making robust slides.
• Jesse Shapiro has a graphic guide on how to give applied microeconomics presentations.
• Academic presentations are done with Beamer (LaTeX) slides. Here is a comprehensive guide from Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham.
• Rafe Meager has slides on public speaking for academic economists.