Economic Policy �and Communication�ECON5521

15 September 2025 (week 8), 2:00pm, G42 beside Café

• Ken Clements
• How to present economics
• Slides available
• See me if you wish to clarify (email to set a time ken.clements@uwa.edu.au)
• Need a volunteer timekeeper

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Summary

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Contents

0. Introduction

1. Writing
2. Slides
3. Interlude
4. Tables and graphs
5. Oral presentations
6. Final ideas
7. References
8. Additional material

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0. Introduction

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�Why presenting is important�

• Everyone must do it
• Present to clients, bosses, employees, shareholders, etc.
• Information transmission
• Presenting is a performance
• Marketing your work

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0. Introduction

What’s the link?

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0. Introduction

Getting started

• Start with a clear research question – narrow to start off and it can growth later
• If too broad to start with, the paper grows and grows…Never finishes
• Possible approaches:
• Extension of a recent article
• A new database to test an hypothesis
• Illuminating some concept in a new manner
• Seek advice from supervisor
• Write something fast
• Originality and doability paramount

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0. Introduction

New ideas

• Originality valued. Can mean taking some chances – but not reckless risk taking
• “To have a great idea, have lots of them” (Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb and founder of General Electric)
• Research partly a destructive process – need to devote energy to finding out what does not work (unhappily!)

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0. Introduction

1. Writing

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Proper presentation not�perfunctory packaging

• A well-written and nicely presented paper has more chance of:
• Being read
• Being convincing
• Getting published
• Boosting your career prospects
• Good presentation a worthwhile investment

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1. Writing

Style in writing

McCloskey (1987):

“The influence of style is greater than you think…

The premise that you can split content from expression is wrong. They are yoke and white in a scrambled egg. Economically speaking, the production function for thinking cannot be written as the sum of two subfunctions, one ‘producing results’ and the other ‘writing them up’. The function is not separable.

You do not learn the details of an argument until writing it in detail, and in writing the details you uncover flaws in the fundamental.”

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1. Writing

Simple but sophisticated

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1. Writing

�Writing a paper�

High-level matters

1. Learn from the master/mistress
2. Start early
3. Revise often
4. Writing improves with practice (Henry Kissinger)

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Nuts and bolts

1. Plain English
2. Short sentences (one idea in each)
3. Active verbs
4. First-person or third? Either ok
5. Spell check

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1. Writing

Effective writing in 5 steps

For effective writing use:

(i) A short, snappy title

(ii) Concrete language

(iii) Plain English

(iv) Short sentences, with at most one idea per sentence

(v) Active voice, preferably present tense, and declarative statements

Economist house style: “simplify and then exaggerate”

Not rules, simply guidelines

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2. Slides

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�Slides: Design�

• The “audience problem”: Listening and absorbing slides together
• Colours can enhance but can be a trap
• White typeface on dark background easier to read than

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• Large font size
• Avoid UPPERCASE
• Avoid distractions with elaborate layouts
• Plain and simple more effective…

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Dark typeface on white background

2. Slides

�(Poor) elaborate layout I�

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2. Slides

�(Poor) elaborate layout II�

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2. Slides

Slides: Content

• Summarise at start – repetition makes for good teaching
• Get to your most important point fast!
• Don’t cram slides
• How many numbers, how many significant digits? 2 or 3 numbers, 2 or 3 significant digits (especially for elasticities)
• Slides with tables – special care needed (more later)
• The “killer slide”. Memorable

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2. Slides

Bad graphs

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Cluttered; legion problems; horizontal axis; vertical axis; colours

2. Slides

Bad graphs

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Cluttered; legion problems; horizontal axis; vertical axis; colours

2. Slides

Good graphs

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2. Slides

Good graphs

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2. Slides

Evocative pic

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Source: Economist 24 July 2023 202 Economist 20 July 2023

2. Slides

More effective pics from Economist��

• German economy broken down

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• Problems with Indian car manufacturing

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• Beware of management consultants (mission creep)

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2. Slides

Still more pics…�

• Share market oblivious to reality?

Or

• Market is efficient?

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• Pets in office

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2. Slides

�Audience participation time

• Name the 3 most prominent economists from the last 100 years
• Why are they famous?
• No right or wrong answer

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3. Fisher

3. Interlude

Digression, �Irving Fisher, 1867 -1947

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3. Fisher

Fisher on money-prices link

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3. Fisher

Fisher the inventor

Roller deck

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Visible card-index system

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3. Fisher

Visible card-index system

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3. Fisher

Fortune made and lost

• Fisher’s system bought by New York Telephone Company
• Business boomed in 1920s -- the “roaring twenties”
• Fisher was worth ≈ $100 million (today’s dollars) at height of boom
• First celebrity economist with successful economic forecasting business
• “No end in sight”
• Lost all in the 1929 Crash (including the family home at Yale)
• Professional reputation in tatters
• Died broke in 1947

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3. Fisher

Fisher’s reputation now recovered

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• Now widely recognised as a great, influential economist
• Creative genius
• Had some interesting extracurricular activities

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End of interlude

3. Fisher

4. Tables and graphs

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Tables

• Retail needed for presentations
• Not wholesale
• Examples…

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4. T & G

Model supervisors

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The forbidden slide!

4. T & G

Model supervisors

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4. T & G

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Forbidden table!

Needs retailing

4. T & G

Simplify graphs

• Simplification approach to tables also applies to graphs
• Make graphs easy to understand
• Retail not wholesale
• Wholesale ok for specialised/informed readers of paper
• Numbers usually best in graphs
• Break complex graphs into elementary steps
• Here’s an example from public economics…

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4. T & G

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Investment, I

A

B

Saving, S

i

r

Social opportunity cost of capital

Source: Harberger (1972)

4. T & G

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Investment, I

A

B

Saving, S

i

r

Social opportunity cost of capital

Source: Harberger (1972)

4. T & G

5. Oral presentations

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�Oral presentation in three phases�

Three phases:

1. Before
2. During
3. After

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5. Oral

�Phase I: Before oral presentation�

1. Practice!

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5. Oral

�Phase I: Before oral presentation�

1. Practice! Try “Rehearse with Coach” in PowerPoint:

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5. Oral

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5. Oral

�Phase I: Before oral presentation�

1. Practice!
2. Nature of audience
3. Check venue beforehand to ensure equipment working
4. Take backup slides
5. Dealing with nerves

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5. Oral

�Phase II: During oral presentation�

1. Stand at the front of lectern -- you are in charge
2. Speak

(i) loudly

(ii) confidently

(iii) clearly

• Ask if people can hear/see you and ur slides
• Maintain eye-contact
• Project to the back of the room
• Don’t read notes -- remember them instead
• Timing: How long can the audience concentrate?

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5. Oral

�Phase III: After oral presentation�

1. Finish on time, without undue haste
2. Acknowledge comments
3. Seek comments and questions
4. Follow up to clarify uncertainties, etc.
5. Go back and revise (when you feel like it)

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Above all, practice

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5. Oral

Three don’ts

1. Don’t start by saying what the paper does not do
2. Don’t apologise for what’s to come
3. Don’t have >3 numbers on a slide

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Have I contravened any of these?

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5. Oral

6. Final ideas

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More on getting started

• Start writing straight away
• But if you don’t want to follow that advice, three items to consult for further enlightenment:
• McCloskey (1987)
• A classic source
• Wit and wisdom in writing economics (Disclosure: McCloskey was one of my great teachers)
• Dixit (1994)
• Good ideas for getting started
• Funny too
• Turabian (2013)
• Widely consulted manual on research presentation ( >9 million sold!)
• Lots of useful guidance on quirks of English (“Compounds used as both nouns and adjectives” p. 287)
• Not relaxed reading, a “lookup” book

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6. Wrap up

Finally

• Presenting important in our business
• Great benefits from good presentation
• Can be life-changing for presenter and audience
• Learnable skill
• Need to practice

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• Good luck with your own presentations
• Thanks for your attention
• Any questions/comments/criticisms?
• Contact me at ken.clements@uwa.edu.au

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6. Wrap up

References

Blaug, M., and P. Lloyd, eds (2010). Famous Figures and Diagrams in Economics. Cheltenham, UK; Northhampton, MA, US: Edward Elgar.

Clements, K. W. (2017). “Notes on the Quantity Theory of Money.” Lecture notes.

Clements, K. W.. (2025). “Notes for PhDs in Economics and Finance on Getting a Job.” Australian Economic Review 58: 41-47.

Cochrane, J. H. (no date). “Writing Tips for PhD Students.” Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/john.cochrane/research/Papers/

Dixit, A. (1994). “My System of Work (Not!).” American Economist 38: 10-16.

Economist (2023). “In Favour of Simple Writing.” 28 September.

Fisher, I. (1922). The Purchasing Power of Money: Its Determination and Relation to Credit, Interest and Crises. New and revised edition. New York: Macmillan. First ed 1911. http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1165/0133_Bk_Sm.pdf

Harberger, A. C. (1972). “On Measuring the Social Opportunity Cost of Public Funds.” In A. C. Harberger Project Evaluation. London: Macmillan. Pp. 94-122.

McCloskey, D. N. (1987). The Writing of Economics. New York: Macmillan, London: Collier Macmillan. Earlier version available as “Economical Writing.” Economic Inquiry 23 (1985): 187-222.

Schwabish, J. A. (2014). “An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28: 209-34.

Turabian, K. L. (2013). A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations: Chicago Style or Students and Techers. 8^th ed revised by W. C. Booth, G. G. Colomb, J. M. Williams and the University of Chicago editorial staff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Weisbach, M. S. (2021). The Economist’s Craft: An Introduction to Research, Publishing, and Professional Development. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Writing Studio (no date). “Writing in Economics.” Thompson Writing Program, Duke University. https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/econ.original.pdf

Zellner, A. (2002). “Keep it Sophisticatedly Simple.” In A. Zellner, H. A. Keuzenkamp and M. McAleer, eds, Simplicity, Inference and Modelling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chpt. 14, pp. 242-62.

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7. References

This is optional reading

8. Additional material

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Good graphs from the Economist

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Source: Economist 19/6/2019, 2/7/2019, 1/8/2019,22/10/2019

8. Additional

Another good one

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There’s no such thing as a free lunch

8. Additional

More bad graphs

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8. Additional

What’s this mean?

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8. Additional

Fisher’s money-and-prices diagram

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8. Additional

Price index averages prices

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8. Additional

Monetary expansion raises prices

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What if money supply increases and velocity remains unchanged? To keep the balance balanced, this increase in the weight of the left-hand side needs to be matched by a corresponding increase of the right. There are three possibilities: (i) The weight of the basket must increase with its distance from the fulcrum unchanged. This corresponds to an increase in the volume of transactions (a rise in real economic activity) with prices unchanged. (ii) The weight of the basket is constant, but it moves further to the right, away from the fulcrum. Here, the price level increases with transactions constant. (iii) Any linear combination of cases (i) and (ii).

For more on the quantity theory, see Clements (2017).

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8. Additional