Doing Economics

8
Conclusion
I wrote this book to demystify the unspoken rules of the economics
profession. In so doing, I have tried to shine some light upon the so-called
hidden curriculum—those things that are normally “learned but not openly
intended” (Martin 1983)—guiding how research economists go about doing
their job.
In Wind, Sand, and Stars (1939), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes:
1
When by mutation a new rose is born in a garden, all the gardeners
rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener
for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common
stamping machine. This little Mozart will love shoddy music in the
stench of night dives. This little Mozart is condemned . . . I am not
weeping over an eternally open wound. Those who carry the wound do
not feel it. It is the human race and not the individual that is wounded
here, is outraged here. I do not believe in pity. What torments me
tonight is the gardener’s point of view . . . What torments me is not the
humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all
these men, of Mozart murdered.
Over the years, I have realized that many research economists fail to be
as successful as they could have been not because they are not smart
enough, not because they are not good enough, but because they were never
taught the rules of the game—because the hidden curriculum has remained
hidden from their view, at least partially.
But just as there is a clear economic argument to be made against
discrimination—a profit-maximizing employer would be foolish to
willingly refuse to hire people whose skin happens to be of a certain color,
because their likelihood of hiring the best person for the job would at best
remain constant and at worst decrease as a result of that employer’s attitude

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—there is a clear economic argument to be made against the hidden
curriculum. Just imagine how much better economic research (and the
discipline) would be if every graduate student in economics and adjacent
fields in the world had access to the social norms and cultural mores of the
profession—if the veil were lifted that covers the hidden curriculum!
. Readers who are put off by Saint-Exupéry’s gendered writing should bear in mind that he wrote in
the 1930s, at a time when the masculine referred to both genders.
. By “top five” departments, I am referring to the eight to ten or so departments that either are or like
to think of themselves of as being in the top five.
Before closing both this chapter and this book, I would be remiss if I did
not address an important, no-less-hidden—at least from the point of view of
an early-career researcher—part of a research economist’s curriculum,
which relates to how we define success.
From one’s very first few weeks in graduate school, the idea that one’s
success is a function of the number of top-five journal publications in one’s
CV is ingrained into one’s mind. And to be sure, there is no denying that
publishing articles in top-five journals implies success.
What many seem to forget, however, is a fundamental rule of logic also
covered during those first few weeks in graduate school as part of most
math review courses, namely the fact that P 
⇒ Q tells us nothing about
whether Q 
⇒ P. Although publishing in the top five journals certainly
implies success in the economics profession, being successful in the
economics profession does not necessarily imply publishing in the top five.
Over the course of my career, I have met a number of people who did not
have a top-five journal publication to their name but who were very
successful as economists and were genuinely happy. Similarly, I have met a
number of people who had an impressive number of top-five publications,
but whose bitterness and pettiness betrayed a profound sense of insecurity
and revealed a complete lack of self-esteem. For all I know, there is no
correlation between one’s sense of whether one has been successful and
whether one is happy on the one hand and, on the other hand, the number of
top-five journal articles to one’s name.
Understand: no amount of top-five publications is liable to make you feel
like you are successful or to make you happy if you constantly compare
yourself to other, more successful economists. If you are going to compare

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yourself to someone, the key to happiness is to compare your present self
with your past self.
There is also another tyranny of the top five, namely the tyranny of the
top five departments.
2
At the beginning of their career, most if not all
research economists are under the impression that since we are all
competing in the marketplace of ideas, the best ideas and the most
important topics rise to the top. More often than not, however, that
impression is mistaken, because the economics profession can be eerily
similar to the fashion or music industries, wherein what a handful of
tastemakers say is what goes. The sooner an early-career research
economist realizes that, the better.
The good news is that there are many ways to be successful in this
profession. Besides publishing in top-five journals and getting a job in a
top-five department, one obvious way is the pursuit of money. There are
plenty of opportunities to make a very good living with a PhD in economics
and related fields. Even as an academic whose salary is nowhere near what
it could be in the private sector, consulting opportunities arise that allow
one to pad one’s income and afford nice things. Another way is the pursuit
of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, wherein you set out to answer research
questions that are of genuine interest to you. Yet another way is in helping
smart young people make the transition from student to scholar. And yet
another way is by doing public service by working in government or
influencing policy by working at a think tank.
During my first semester in graduate school, I remember being struck by
the elegance of a metaphor used by Mas-Colell et al. (1995) to explain why
the Slutsky matrix was symmetric under the usual assumptions of
microeconomic theory—a result that is not intuitively obvious. The
metaphor they use to describe why a change in the price of good i changes
the quantity demanded of good j in the same way a change in the price of
good j changes the quantity demanded of good i was as follows: no matter
what path you choose to climb a mountain, you will have covered the same
height once you attain the summit. A PhD in economics and related fields
offers many paths to scaling the heights of success. It is up to you to find
which of these many paths will work for you.

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