Doing Economics

part, but also private-sector firms that conduct research on human subjects)
who do not offer their own training. Even though IRB certification is
required to apply for most if not all grants involving human subjects,
oftentimes we rush through this training because it is just one more thing
we have to do in order to submit a grant proposal. It is worth paying
attention to what that training entails, however, both because it makes us
more responsible researchers and because it makes us more informed
citizens.
16
What does tend to get more onerous is filling out the various required
forms necessary to get IRB approval for your research with human subjects.
This will usually consist of a form provided to you by your institution’s IRB
that you have to fill out with your answers to various questions (e.g.,
number of subjects, potential risk to your subjects, whether subjects will
include children or members of vulnerable categories), the consent form
you will use for your human subjects to give their free and full assent to
being included in your research, as well as any translation in the
language(s) spoken by your subjects, the various survey instruments,
research, and experimental protocols you will be using (or advanced drafts
thereof), and so on.
Because the details of any IRB application tend to be specific to a given
research project, there is not much to be offered in the way of guidance
other than (i) get started as early as you can on getting IRB approval, as the
process can take several weeks,
17
and (ii) have patience with your
institution’s IRB staff, because they generally tend to deal with biomedical
research projects instead of social science projects. For example, IRB
approval was once withheld from me because the IRB staff deemed that the
lab-in-the-field experiments I was planning to run were “gambling.” After I
politely explained that lab games were common in economics, marketing,

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psychology, and other disciplines, and that payouts were necessary for
truthful revelation, IRB approval was granted.
Notes
1
. Moreover, in some departments, the graduate student funding model is closer to that used in the
natural sciences, wherein a graduate student’s stipend, tuition, and fees are funded by faculty
members’ grants, in which case students are admitted in the program to work on specific research
projects and with specific faculty members.
2
. See 
https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/
as the reference for this discussion.
3
. For many internal sources of funding, you are more likely to get funded if you can clearly explain
that you plan on applying for external funding later on, and make a credible case for why you
think you are likely to receive that external funding. In that sense, many internal sources of
funding are intended as seed money, i.e., as funds to be leveraged to get more funds.
4
. That said, bear in mind that the spread of those rates will be rather tight. In a 2014 survey of ICRs
at the top 50 institutions in terms of funding received from the NIH (Datahound 2014), New York
University had a whopping 69-percent indirect cost rate. The lowest ICR in that survey was the
University of Florida’s 49 percent. A colleague who teaches at a liberal arts college tells me the
ICR at her institution is 39 percent, but that the ICR at another liberal arts college across town is
much higher, and on par with the figures quoted earlier.
5
. A colleague noted that this is generally independent of the size of the grant, and that managing a
multimillion dollar grant is often no more costly than managing a $150,000 grant. This means that
you are often much better off getting one big grant than cobbling together the same funds from
many different sources.
6
. The same colleague mentioned that the costs of applying for a grant can be significantly reduced
if you are sub-awardee on someone else’s grant proposal.
7
. A colleague also suggested a ratcheting-up strategy, wherein you get a small grants to test out an
idea and establish a proof of concept, and if the idea works, scale it up by going for bigger grants.
8
. A colleague who teaches at an R2 notes that at R1s, researchers can focus on the research design
and have someone else do the rest, but in her case, she only gets minor help with budget-related
stuff, which is a huge barrier to her getting external funding.
9
. “Because it’s there.”
10
. It is common for people on nine-month appointments to supplement their nine-month salary with
one or two months of grant-funded salary.
11
. At liberal arts colleges, buying out of teaching is often strongly discouraged if not impossible.
12
. Very often, the people in a foundation who will read your budget are not the same as the people
who will read your proposal itself.
13
. You can find US government-approved per diems for most big cities in the US and in the world
online.
14
. In cases where researchers from multiple institutions collaborate, it is generally possible to seek
approval from only one institution’s IRB, and to make that IRB the IRB of record.
15
. See 
www.citiprogram.org
.

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16
. Lest you think of having to get approval for research with human subjects as an antiquated
procedure, as I write these lines in October 2020, the American media has just revealed to the
public that the US government has allegedly been performing forced hysterectomies on migrant
women at Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities (Treisman 2020), and worse
stories involving cruel experiments with human subjects have been percolating from North Korea
for decades.
17
. It is sometimes possible to request an expedited review (instead of a full review) if the risk to
your subjects is low. This is often the case with economics research, and so it is well worth asking
for an expedited review whenever possible.

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