{"id":353,"date":"2013-06-17T01:15:38","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T05:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/?page_id=353"},"modified":"2020-06-13T13:04:47","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T17:04:47","slug":"dissertation-advice","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/dissertation-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Manove’s Dissertation Advice for PhD Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my first year at college, I was assigned an adviser from the physics department.\u00a0 He was a senior professor, not too many years from retirement.\u00a0 \u201cYou can ask me anything you want,\u201d he said in our first meeting, \u201cbut don\u2019t ask me about sex\u2014I don’t remember it.\u201d\u00a0 I finished my own thesis more than 50 years ago, so perhaps I ought to adopt a similar attitude about dissertations.\u00a0 Instead, I will bother you with unsolicited advice.\u00a0 My advice is completely unofficial: it does NOT represent department policy in any way.<\/p>\n

When to Get Started<\/b><\/h4>\n

\u201cAnyone can write a good dissertation,\u201d they say, \u201cbut not everyone can finish it quickly.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, but it helps if you get an early start.\u00a0 If you want, you can sit around thinking, \u201cI don\u2019t have any ideas,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m embarrassed to talk with a professor,\u201d or\u00a0 \u201cI have to put all of my energy into being a TA.\u201d\u00a0 Those feelings are natural, but it’s in your self-interest to ignore them.\u00a0 Some students say to themselves, \u201cNow that I\u2019ve finished my coursework, I\u2019ll relax for a year.\u201d Sure, you deserve a rest, but the opportunity cost of a long rest is certain to be very high.\u00a0 In my view, you should start working on your thesis as soon as your second-year paper is finished and you have no more than one course left to complete.\u00a0 Normally, this means that you should start working on your dissertation by the end of the first semester of your third year, or sooner.<\/p>\n

Choosing a Topic\"Michelangelo\"<\/a><\/b><\/h4>\n

Michelangelo wrote: \u201cEvery block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.\u201d\u00a0 Likewise, after years of coursework, after reading the newspapers, after listening to professors, preachers and politicians, you have a good idea for a dissertation topic somewhere inside your brain.\u00a0 You have only to find it.\u00a0 And a topic that you discover yourself is bound to be more motivating than one suggested by an adviser would be.\u00a0 Almost everything that goes on in this world, from sinning to soccer, has an economic aspect that can be explored.\u00a0 Inasmuch as pure theory and econometric theory aren\u2019t exactly about what goes on in the world, the discussion below is probably less applicable to those fields.<\/p>\n

Unless you are a true genius, a good thesis topic is a narrow topic, not one designed to revamp a field of economics.\u00a0 But narrow topics can help answer broad questions.\u00a0 For example, think about the topic \u201cWhat Does Schooling Do?\u201d\u00a0 A lot of work has been done in this area, but there’s a lot more to find out.\u00a0 Do students learn productive skills in their coursework? Or do they merely learn self-discipline and how to meet deadlines? \u00a0Does schooling yield positive externalities to others in the community?\u00a0 Do people attend college as a signal of their ability?\u00a0 Or is college primarily a consumption activity?\u00a0 There\u2019s room for a thousand new papers here alone.<\/p>\n

To me, the most important question in development economics is \u201cWhy are poor countries poor?\u201d\u00a0 There must be a large number of partial answers to that question.\u00a0 Can you find one of them?\u00a0 Or why did China get rich so fast?\u00a0 If you\u2019ve lived in China, you may have a small idea that you can develop in this area.<\/p>\n

Of course, if you like the idea in your second-year paper, you may want to continue to work on that topic.\u00a0 If you\u2019re bored with it, choose something else.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to work when you are bored.<\/p>\n

The department has many research seminars and workshops, some say too many.\u00a0 Check them out at http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/econ\/econcal\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Start attending them in your second year, and by your third year, try to attend at least two a week.\u00a0 In many of the workshops, PhD students are presenting their research.\u00a0 These are great places to see what others are doing and to help you find ideas for your own research.\u00a0 In recent years, PhD students have established a number of reading groups in which students present the work of established scholars or preliminary versions of their own work.\u00a0 Most PhD students find the reading groups to be very useful as well.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that \u201cthe best is an enemy of the good.\u201d\u00a0 You don\u2019t need a formal search model to know that it doesn\u2019t make sense to search until you find the perfect topic.\u00a0 Start working on something quickly; you\u2019ll have plenty of time to shift the topic as you go.\u00a0 After you find an idea of interest, write up a description of the idea in a few pages of prose\u2014no math or econometrics allowed. \u00a0Then go off to talk with faculty members. \u00a0[Caution: some pure economic and econometric theorists dislike the verbal approach, but I myself believe in it.]<\/p>\n

Finding Dissertation Advisers<\/b><\/h4>\n

All faculty members are busy.\u00a0 Some are busy working, and some are busy feeling guilty about not working enough.\u00a0 But that\u2019s their problem, not yours.\u00a0 Your problem is to find several faculty members (normally three), busy or not, who can advise you on your dissertation.\u00a0 When you want to meet with a faculty member, send an email asking for an appointment.\u00a0 If she doesn\u2019t answer within a day or two, just resend the email (no need to write another one).\u00a0 If the faculty member says, \u201cI don\u2019t have much time this week,\u201d you can respond, \u201cWhen will you have time?\u201d\u00a0 Eventually, you will have an appointment.<\/p>\n

Begin discussing your ideas with faculty as soon as you have written a few pages describing one or more of your ideas.\u00a0 This should happen by the end of the first semester of your third year.\u00a0 Talking with a person of the opposite sex (or the same sex if you prefer) doesn\u2019t require you to marry him or her.\u00a0 Likewise, talking with a faculty member about a research idea, doesn\u2019t require you to adopt her as an adviser.\u00a0 That can come later, after you have been meeting with the person on a regular basis.\u00a0 Meet with several faculty members.\u00a0 If you are working on health economics, for example, you may want to meet with someone who is knowledgeable about the institutions in your favorite country, someone else who knows theory, and someone else who has experience with empirical work and data (yuk).\u00a0 If you enter a faculty member\u2019s office, and find it too messy or too clean, or if his shirt is the wrong shade of pink, then try someone else.\u00a0 Shop around.<\/p>\n

Some faculty members already have a large number of advisees, and some, especially the younger set, may have very few.\u00a0 You can find out how many by asking around or by asking Andy Campolieto, who tends to know these things.\u00a0 As with most choices, there\u2019s a tradeoff here.\u00a0 Having lots of advisees is a good signal about advising quality, but it may be a bad signal about available time.\u00a0 Younger faculty with few advisees may be able to give you more time, may have lots of fresh ideas, and may have very up-to-date knowledge of technical tools.\u00a0 Take a look at their CVs to see what they are publishing.\u00a0 And don\u2019t forget that if you want to be a professor when you grow up, you might look for a primary adviser (first reader) who has lots of contacts and can help you get a good academic job.<\/p>\n

Try to see your advisers on a regular basis, at least every week or two.\u00a0 The main reason for doing this is not to hear their penetrating comments, but rather to keep yourself working.\u00a0 It\u2019s embarrassing to return to a professor\u2019s office and say, \u201cI haven\u2019t done any research in the last two weeks.\u201d \u00a0You will have a strong incentive to work hard and avoid embarrassment, which is the most painful and best remembered of all emotions.<\/p>\n

If you plan to write an empirical thesis, and most of you should, you will need data.\u00a0 The most important thing you need to know about data is that the word \u201cdata\u201d is plural.\u00a0 If you accidentally say \u201cthis data\u201d instead of \u201cthese data\u201d you won\u2019t sound like the pompous scholar that you want to be.\u00a0 The next most important thing to know about data is what data to get and how to get them<\/em>.\u00a0 Good advisers can be especially helpful for this, though some of you may have special knowledge or connections with institutions in your home country that will permit you to acquire data on your own.\u00a0 In any event, you should start working on data acquisition as early as possible, because the process can be slow and sometimes costly.\u00a0 You may also have to clean the data before you use them, an activity that requires both the innocence of youth and the guiding hand of an adviser who wouldn\u2019t want to do it herself.<\/p>\n

The Dissertation Proposal<\/b><\/h4>\n

In recent years the dissertation proposal has become optional, but I strongly recommend it.\u00a0 Bart Lipman stated that the proposal \u201cneeds to be specific enough that your advisors [he means \u201cadvisers\u201d] can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that at least most of what you propose to do can be done and is worth doing.\u201d\u00a0 I would say it this way: the plan of research described in your proposal should be feasible and sufficient to qualify you for the degree.\u00a0 I recommend that you include a detailed table of contents in the proposal, and next to each item write \u201ccompleted\u201d if it has been completed or the date by which you plan to complete it.\u00a0 If your committee accepts your proposal, it serves not only as a research plan, but also as an informal contract that sets out what you are expected to do in the final dissertation.\u00a0 If you do what you say you will in the accepted proposal, your advisers are less likely to insist on more work later.<\/p>\n

Some time ago, the GIC decided to impose a deadline for the proposal at the end of May of your fourth year.\u00a0 That deadline was far too late.\u00a0 If you begin working on your dissertation in the first semester of your third year, as you should, then May of your fourth year will seem very far away.\u00a0 You may be seduced into spending all your time teaching, talking with your mom on the phone, or worrying about your kids, none of which are productive activities.\u00a0 Find a commitment device that requires you to defend your proposal during the first semester of your fourth year.\u00a0 For example, you could give $1000 to Albert Ma, and tell him that he can keep $20 for each day that you are late.<\/p>\n

The Job-Market Paper<\/b><\/h4>\n

If you want to obtain a good research-oriented job, you will need to complete a potentially publishable job-market paper by the end of October in the year you go on the market, normally in your 6th year nowadays.\u00a0 The October deadline is not a flexible one: every day that goes by after that deadline lowers your expected number of interviews at the Meetings.\u00a0 Without interviews you won\u2019t have fly-outs, and no fly-outs, no-job.\u00a0 Yes, there are exceptions, and the Catholic Church recognizes miracles, but these are rare.<\/p>\n

The job-market paper is usually a completed chapter of the doctoral dissertation.\u00a0 If you defend your proposal at the end of May, you will have five months to complete the paper, which isn\u2019t a lot of time to get your first publishable paper ready.\u00a0 That\u2019s another reason why I recommend an earlier December deadline for the proposal.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve started to read many job-market papers, and I\u2019ve read a few of them completely.\u00a0 The most important thing about a job-market paper (or any research paper) is the title.\u00a0 A good title is informative, though probably not cute.\u00a0 If the title sounds uninteresting, a potential reader is likely to move on to the title of someone else\u2019s paper.\u00a0 Next comes the abstract.\u00a0 The abstract should explain in a few words what you have done and why it\u2019s important or even surprising.\u00a0 If the abstract is dull or incomprehensible, the reader is likely to assume that the rest of the paper is the same way and place it gently into the recycle bin.\u00a0 (This is a bad thing, because recycled paper lowers the demand for wood pulp and reduces the incentive to grow trees.)\u00a0 Next in importance comes the introduction.\u00a0 Here you not only explain what you\u2019ve done and why it\u2019s important, but you also explain the intuition behind your idea in words.\u00a0 Provide examples wherever possible.\u00a0 If after reading the introduction, I don\u2019t understand what the author is doing, I assume (correctly) that the author doesn\u2019t understand what he is doing either, and I go no further.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of the paper, you want to continue to emphasize intuition and examples.\u00a0 Put most of the nasty math and proofs of propositions in the appendix.\u00a0 Some economists think that lots of technical stuff will impress others in the profession.\u00a0 But the truth is that too much math interrupts the flow of your argument.\u00a0 In fact, very few economists like to read math, and those who do are likely to be rather strange\u2014just think about my colleagues in theory.\u00a0 Be sure to finish your paper on time, be sure that your advisers read the paper and quiz you about it, and have it copyedited before you send it out.<\/p>\n

The Doctoral Dissertation<\/b><\/h4>\n

The normal dissertation consists of three papers, related or otherwise.\u00a0 Two of the papers should be pretty good, and potentially publishable; the third paper can be a kind of filler so long as it doesn\u2019t embarrass you or the department.\u00a0 The entire dissertation has a title and an abstract, which the dean reads (make sure it\u2019s grammatical), and, normally, an introduction and conclusion.\u00a0 The thesis as a package isn\u2019t very important nowadays\u2014nobody but your mother or father is likely to pay any attention to it.\u00a0 It\u2019s the papers inside the thesis that are of interest: you will put them online and eventually submit them for publication.<\/p>\n

The Dissertation Defense<\/b><\/h4>\n

Before you can graduate with your PhD, you must describe your dissertation in a so-called dissertation defense.\u00a0 At BU (and in most US universities) the defense is an informal formality that takes place when the dissertation is substantially complete.\u00a0 You will have about an hour to review your work and answer questions from the examining committee.\u00a0 After that, the examining committee meets and decides whether or not you passed the defense (almost everyone does) and then decides whether or not a bit more work is necessary (it usually is).<\/p>\n

The examining committee consists of five people: your three advisers and two other faculty members who serve as warm bodies.\u00a0 Your advisers are expected to read and comment on various versions of your thesis in advance of the defense; the warm bodies (fourth reader and chair of the examining committee) are expected to attend the defense and ask a question or two during your presentation.\u00a0 With the agreement of the DGI, you may be able to choose the warm bodies yourself, but be careful: they must be intelligent enough to write their initials on the required form and to sip the cheap champagne-like fluid they serve after they tell you that you\u2019ve passed.\u00a0 I myself often serve as a warm body, and I enjoy the process.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/b><\/h4>\n

The main ingredients for success in a PhD program are self-confidence, self-discipline and ambition.\u00a0 Intelligence has little to do with the process.\u00a0 I\u2019m confident that I\u2019ve given you good advice, even though some of my colleagues will undoubtedly think it\u2019s disastrous.\u00a0 Fortunately, by the time you find out and decide to hold me responsible, I probably will have retired and gone off to enjoy the sunshine in Tenerife or some such place.\u00a0 This is odd, because I don\u2019t like sunshine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my first year at college, I was assigned an adviser from the physics department.\u00a0 He was a senior professor, not too many years from retirement.\u00a0 \u201cYou can ask me anything you want,\u201d he said in our first meeting, \u201cbut don\u2019t ask me about sex\u2014I don’t remember it.\u201d\u00a0 I finished my own thesis more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3400,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/353\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/manove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}