Yesterday I said that Tyler Cowen is “the giver of the best and worst career advice I’ve ever gotten.” In the comments, Jason follows up:

Please share the best and worst career tips Tyler offered you.

Some of the best advice:

  • If you suspect that a paper should be sub-divided into more papers, always sub-divide.
  • Every academic paper should have an easily-summarized original contribution (obvious in retrospect, but not until Tyler repeatedly told me).
  • Submit the webbed essay “Why I Am Not An Austrian Economist” to the Southern Economic Journal; this led to my first academic publication, a real confidence booster.

Some of the worse advice:

  • Don’t split “Systematically Biased Beliefs About Economics” into more papers. (I split it into four papers, which were published in the Economic Journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Public Choice).
  • This paper isn’t publishable. (Social Science Quarterly took it).
  • Don’t try hard to make The Myth of the Rational Voter readable, because no one will read it anyway.

Like I said, luckily I know when to listen to Tyler…