New School Economic Review

Tiss the season to write abstracts – for everyone of us!

by Benjamin on December 12, 2010

I just had a beer with an old friend and a brand new Ph.D. student, and as usual we found ourselves chatting about papers, friends, academia and such war stories, debating which conferences to submit papers to this year. Then I asked our new arrival in academia which conference he was thinking of submitting a paper to. He (coming from a ‘top’ university) quietly said that his fellow Ph.D. students weren’t encouraging on the topic, so being in his first year he didn’t want to make a fool of himself and also he didn’t have a paper ready. Let me stress now that it doesn’t matter what year you are in, nor if you have a paper ready – you only need an abstract to submit a paper for a conference, and if you are a Ph.D. student, you should be writing an abstract and submitting it !

The majority of papers that go to conferences are not written when the abstract is submitted, and some never even make it into a proper script by the conference ! (That’s reserved for the very senior, so I wouldn’t recomment it). Many conferences have young scholar sessions, and most offer a bit of money for travel, while your department is sure to have a conference budget. And you can get some of that money, if you have a paper (read: abstract) ready for the conference. So the key question here is to ask yourself, “where do I want to be in six months with this research?” Write down 250 words which answer how you will get there, and submit it.

Going to conferences means you’ll meet people who are interested in what you do, and who have expert knowledge. Seeing where the discipline is going, finding people willing to read your stuff (because they’re interested) and give you comments and feedback. Fantastic stuff. Chatting up a journal editor over a few beers in the evening is never a bad plan either. So step to it, even if writing abstracts can be hard and there aren’t a lot of good guides out there, but the best tip I’ve seen, is from Joe Wolfe:

An abstract is not an introduction. It is a résumé of your thesis
………………………………………-Joe Wolfe, Uni. of New South Wales

The effects of crisis on distribution

by Benjamin on March 6, 2010

Yesterday the New School played host to a veritable who’s who of economists concerned with distribution and inequality as “The Effects of Crisis on Distribution” one-day Conference. Over the coming days I will try and get some more of the content of the conference, but with sessions attended by the UN, World Bank, and several other institutions academic and policy-oriented the session on the perceived worsening of US inequality, development and the fall-out from the crisis there was a lot on the table. [the overview is here] Well done to the conference organisers, all of them students, who have been working at this since June! Conferences take time to do, but they are well worth it. Hope you’ve all had a good nights well-deserved sleep.