Chiara Yates, professor of economics at Southern New Hampshire University, offers advice to aspiring economists navigating their studies and the early stages of their career. The following article first appeared in the INOMICS Handbook 2022. Download the INOMICS Handbook

In spite of all its distracting qualities, your phone is one of the most useful tools you’ve got, whether you’re studying or working in the field. It’s simply a question of how you use it. With this in mind, we have compiled a list of apps that are helpful for economists to have. They can help you find data, stay up to date, and crunch numbers on the go. INOMICS takes part in the Apple affiliate program. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn money through any qualifying purchases made after you click through. However, this is not a sponsored post.

Economics PhDs are aware of the transferable skills they should master to land a job in industry. But what about the reverse: is prior industry experience valuable for a PhD program?

If you’re looking to further enhance your profession as an environmental engineer in Canada, getting a Master’s in Environmental Engineering is a great way to go. This program will further expand your knowledge and increase your employability.

Reading magazines is a great way to stay up to date with industry trends within your specific field - key if you are keen to advance in your engineering career . Magazines offer a centralised accumulation of all relevant and current information, with most magazines offering archives stretching back for years where you can find past issues. There are many different types of engineering magazines, with some geared towards entertainment, while others are more focused on detailed engineering topics.  This article offers an overview of engineering-related magazines for some of the main branches of engineering, including mechanical, civil, chemical, and electrical engineering. The magazines mentioned below are aimed at engineering students and professionals.

Civil engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with the design and construction of buildings, roads, bridges, and other large-scale structures. It is an established profession that has existed since the establishment of the first permanent human settlements. Within the civil engineering profession, there are many subdisciplines to specialise in, including:

Civil engineering students study the built environment, specifically how its various structures are designed, constructed, and maintained. A basic understanding of how static objects, such as buildings, behave is required to succeed as a civil engineer.

Mechanical engineering students study the forces and thermal environment encountered by a product and its parts so they can come up with the best designs and manufacturing processes of a product. Most importantly, an in-depth understanding of objects and systems in motion are required, which makes mechanical engineering a broad and diverse discipline of engineering. While it can be difficult in the current climate to move to a new city or country in order to pursue your studies, many universities, including some of those on our list, offer distance-learning online degrees. You don’t have to leave wherever you're holed up and, most importantly, you can stay safe!

Like most engineers, those working in the energy sector have a pretty diverse brief, and are tasked both with the reduction of existing energy consumption, and the improvement and development of technologies to produce energy more efficiently. As such, the optimal energy engineer is an optimiser and problem solver by nature. It's a highly specialised area of work and typically requires a post graduate qualification, but that's okay, you're a smart bunch. And actually, there are exceptions to this rule as some institutions offer energy engineering programmes which allow you to circumvent that need.

What does it take to succeed as an economics student? What qualities make a good economics student – one who thrives at university, enjoys their economics degree, and then, once it's all done and dusted, who goes and gets a good job? These are big questions – there's no doubt – and their answers may not immediately be clear. 

Whether you are a seasoned researcher or a new economics student, it pays to know which journals are the most prestigious and well-known for certain topics. They can help you find the right papers for a literature review, stay on top of the latest research in the field, and even help you set your own publishing goals.

A new initiative from Hamburg University, Universität Potsdam, and the Berlin School of Economics is helping economics students get ahead in the fundamentals of econometrics. The online tool mcEmpirics offers econometrics practice tests for students and is now being rolled out for whole economics departments with new campus-licenses. Especially with the challenges of remote teaching resulting from the ongoing global pandemic, mcEmpirics is gaining notice as a digital solution for economics students and teachers worldwide.

So you've coming up to exam season? Maybe you've already sat your written exams, and the only one left is the oral. Oral exams can be an daunting experience for students, so today we're sharing some advice on how to get through an oral exam with as little pain as possible.

With university life still suffering major disruptions and COVID fatigue reaching new heights, we at INOMICS felt it time for the latest instalment in our ‘online course’ series.

Given the excellent feedback we received from our audience on an earlier blog post that compiled a list of free econometrics courses online, we have now prepared for you a list of free online courses (MOOC format) that you can take in the discipline of mathematics. Like econometrics, proficiency in math is a prerequisite for performing well in economics courses at all reputable universities around the world. The knowledge required may range from high school algebra and differential equations to understanding the basics of logic and analysis of algorithms.

Microeconomics is the study of what economic actors - be they people, firms, or whole industries -  do when confronted with choice, and how this affects the distribution of resources. It’s fascinatingly revealing but can be frustratingly complex. And regardless of which direction your economics career takes, it’s likely that, at some point, it will have to be mastered. But that’s fine, INOMICS is here. 

INOMICS has seen a surge in demand for online courses recently, with far more students searching for higher education alternatives. With the effects of COVID-19 ongoing, and many institutions still closed, enrolling in a fully online program or online degree has clearly become the best way to continue self-improvement and career development. Institutions offer a variety of online degree programmes and massive open online courses (MOOCs), which often have less expensive tuition fees. Additionally, you will save money by not having to commute to a campus. Distance learning can improve your technical skills too, as you navigate new learning management systems. Before you choose a course, though, there are a few things you need to consider. Here INOMICS’ walks you through the basics!

Been meaning to brush up on your econometric skills, not got round to it, and now worried you won't be able to due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic? No fear - there's plenty of studying you can do from the comfort of your own home online. While nothing beats face-to-face interaction between student and teacher, online courses have other advantages, not least being that you can study when you want and at your own pace.

In these weird times, many (though by no means all) of us find ourselves with a lot of time on our hands, stuck at home with not much to do. But actually, there are plenty of things you can get stuck into to keep you busy, and not all of them involve watching ten hours of Netflix a day. We here at INOMICS are big fans of convincing people to learn a language, because we think it's one of the best things you can do for your brain. And the modern world lends itself nicely to this undertaking: technology, downloadable directly to the smartphone, turns your social media device into a potent learning machine. There are a range of language learning apps available, many free, many with paid features, all useful in their own way. What better way to spend the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic?

With the coronavirus making studying from home the new norm, it’s imperative we look beyond the frustrations of no longer having face-to-face contact and find a routine to keep our brains alert, and educational progress on track. Yes, it’s a difficult time, but INOMICS is here to help.

Here at INOMICS, we’ve always been dedicated to trying to help you, the economist (fledgling or otherwise) get the most out of your education and career. Whether that be offering you the best new courses and conferences, nudging you towards the perfect university degree, or helping you apply to jobs once you’re done studying, we’re there to give advice and present opportunities you may not have otherwise found.

Attending university is a ton of fun, but it also prepares you for the next stage in your career. Even your hobbies can be advantages in your career development if you pursue them at a high level. Everything you do at university can be added to your CV in order to help you get a job in the future, and universities are great places to take part in extracurricular activities. And remember, not only will these help you practically after you've finished your degree and are moving on to working or further education, but they'll also make your stay at university more enjoyable, enabling you to meet friends, develop intellectually and stay fit. Although lots of these will help you whatever career you decide to pursue, some may be a little more useful specifically for a career in economics.

Everyone knows about the hard skills you need to be able to succeed in economics or in academia in general: excellent writing and proofreading skills, the ability to extract information from what are often dense scientific texts, and being able to evaluate and analyse data effectively, among other things. But they aren’t the only skills you need to have. There are, of course, the dreaded soft skills – a slippery term that can mean anything from being able to clearly communicate your ideas to another human being to more abstract concepts like emotional intelligence. But what are the most important soft skills to have, and how can you develop the ones that need some more work?

A wise economist once said of new theories ‘if everybody likes your idea it means you’ve done nothing important’. Provocative? Yes, a little. Its sentiment though, rather than a clarion call for economists to adopt a wilfully antagonistic outlook, is better read as a request for bravery, for the courage to find answers to questions that may upset the status quo. Well, that is at least one possible interpretation…

Esteemed economist, Princeton Professor, and friend of INOMICS, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, generously took time out of his busy schedule to take part in the second INOMICS Handbook Questionnaire. Opposite him, in his customary role of quizmaster, was Professor Marcel Fratzscher, president of the DIW Berlin, and one of Germany’s leading voices in macroeconomics. Keeping with tradition, and as a nod to the heavyweight reputations of those involved, we dubbed the encounter ‘Fratzscher v Rossi-Hansberg’. What played out proved illuminating and often personal, the dialogue shedding light on the inner workings of the mystery that is the ‘economist’s mind’. For anyone even loosely connected to economics the following conversation will make an interesting read.