Why I choose to be an Economist on Hive

Hi Everyone,

In the video, in this post, I discuss why I decided to become an economist on Hive. Hive has the potential to be a great home for people who have professional and specialised knowledge and skills. Before I joined Steem/Hive in June 2017, I had worked as an economist for about 10 years. My economics career began during the period I wrote my Master’s Thesis at Griffith University in the 2006/2007. My thesis was on the topic of education where I focused on the pursuit of higher education. While doing so, I worked as a tutor at the University. I taught first year economics. After I completed my Master’s, I got a job at Queensland Transport and Main Roads (TMR). For the majority of my time at this job, I worked on Cost Benefit Analyses (CBA) for transport and road projects and programs. I worked there until 2016. From 2016 to 2017, I worked at Building Queensland as the Social Benefits Manager. I created and designed the Social Impact Evaluation methodology and guidelines. In 2017, I left to run my own business ‘Spectrum Economics’ (origin of the name @spectrumecons). I reviewed business cases and CBAs for projects. I also maintained CBA models for my previous employers (TMR).

Economists have a few options regarding the work they wish to pursue after graduating. Initially, I wanted to be an academic. I wanted to share my knowledge of economics with other people as well as gain more knowledge through research. Academics have more freedom to pursue areas of interest than many other professions. However, I needed a PhD in economics to progress in that career. Unless you have a scholarship, obtaining a PhD is both time consuming and expensive.

Another option is to work for the Government. It does not require the same level of academic qualifications and the salary can be comparable. However, working for the Government greatly reduces your freedom to explore and research. Based on my personal experience as well as observations, I found that the Government rarely use the advice provided by economists to make or enhance decisions. Instead, the Government use economists to promote their own agendas and predetermined course of action.

Economists could work in the private sector as an employee or run their own business. As an employee, an economist could earn a good salary. I believe the job can be quite demanding with long hours and limited freedom to pursue own interests. I cannot comment much, as I did not work as an employee in the private sector. It is likely experiences will vary considerably between different companies. Running your own business is difficult but also potentially very rewarding. You will need to find your own work, which might involve taking whatever work you can find. Most of the time, I conducted reviews and peer reviews of CBAs and business cases. As a small business, it is very difficult to get big jobs as larger companies normally take them. However, it is possible to work with a bigger company in a specialised role. Running your own economics consultancy is likely to give you a very imbalanced workload. Sometimes you could be working all hours of the day, every day. Other times there will be no work at all.

Working as an economist and posting to Hive is another possible career path. The mostly very low price of Hive renders it a part-time job. However, it could offer a nice supplementary income if you are running your own business, which may have plenty of down time when work is slow. When the price of Hive is low, it is a great opportunity to stake Hive and earn from holding Hive Power, which will add a more consistent flow of income. When the price rises, your income from staking and posting rises. If the price of Hive rises significantly and remains reasonably high, it will offer a great opportunity to become a full time Hive economist.

More posts

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These 'Collection of Works' posts have been updated to contain links to the Hive versions of my posts.

My New CBA Udemy Course

The course contains over 10 hours of video, over 60 downloadable resources, over 40 multiple-choice questions, 2 sample case studies, 1 practice CBA, life time access and a certificate on completion. The course is priced at the Tier 1 price of £20. I believe it is frequently available at half-price.

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