書(shū)名：The Economist's Craft ：An Introduction to Research, Publishing, and Professional Development

Preface

• Someone should write a book explaining to academics how to do research and manage their careers.

• The purpose of this book is to provide a guide for a scholar who wishes to pursue a career in academia.

• The primary focus is on research—how a scholar selects research topics, does the analysis,writes her papers,and publishes them—though the book marries research and publishing with professional development.

• Since my background is in economics and finance, the book is most relevant to scholars working in those fields. For scholars in other field who might be considered part of the broader economics ecosystem,such as accounting, some aspects of public policy, and related social sciences, the book should be equally relevant.

• Writing papers, making presentations,and communicating with other scholars are basic parts of a professor’s job.

• Being a professional scholar is completely different from almost any other profession, and many people who want to become academics never figure out important aspects of the job.

• Doctoral students are always justifiably nervous that they aren’t making optimal use of their time in the program, so they are almost always very appreciative of whatever guidance they can get from faculty.

• In fact, the demand for advice is so great that many young scholars even turn to internet message boards, where they ask for the opinions of anonymous strangers who usually know as little as they do.

• Far too many publicly circulated papers contain incredibly long, mind-numbingly dull literature surveys; introductions that go on and on before they tell the reader what the point of the paper is and why the reader should bother to waste her time on it; data descriptions containing insufficie detail for a third party to replicate the results; tables that are unneces sary, badly labeled, or hard to understand; or overly dry prose writte in the passive voice and apparently designed to put the reader to sleep.

• I often teach students in my private equity class that the best venture capitalists begin to add value even before they sign a contract; it turns out that the same is true for the best editors.

• My recommendations in this book are a matter of opinion, not fact. Many academics have had excellent careers doing the opposite of what I recommend.