Computing resources

Templates for reproducible research projects in economics

An empirical or computational research project only becomes a useful building block for science when all steps can be easily repeated and modified by others. This means that we should automate as much as possible, compared to pointing and clicking with a mouse or, more generally, keeping track yourself of what needs to be done.

For doing so, it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel each time you start a new project or want to ensure that the results of an ongoing project remain easily reproducible. If you follow this link, you will find a set of templates along with extensive documentation that will help you get started.

I employ these templates in all of my own projects and many students and collaborators have found them useful over the years. Do let me know if that applies to you as well!

My settings for the VS Code editor

Everybody who programmes has his / her particular comfort zone when it comes to the right environment in terms of IDEs, frontends to Version Control Systems, etc.. The one and only thing literally every serious developer uses is a powerful, configurable editor. After using Sublime Text for a long time and having a rather short affair with Atom, I have now switched to VS Code. It is very stable, fast, has lots of useful extensions, and it is free, so it is great for classroom settings.

Anyhow, the usefulness of these editors hinges on the particular packages one has installed. Maybe some will find my selection a helpful starting point, so you can download it here. To install the extensions, first open a shell. You could even use one that is integrated into VS Code by pressing Ctrl + Shift + `. If the keyboard shortcut does not work, just open any editor. Or, if on a non-US keyboard, switch to the EN-US layout and use the key just above the tab key. Then paste the contents of the file there. No guarantee for cross-platform compatibility, tested only on Ubuntu. Also see here. On Windows, the command `code` often is not being found. You may want to add it to your path, as described `here <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77739587/how-to-open-vscode-from-powershell>`__, for example.