Assistant Professor at Peking University HSBC Business School (PHBS)
As an economics student, managing literature reviews, empirical papers, notes, data, and code can quickly become overwhelming. This page gives you an overview of the free tools I recommend and links to detailed, step-by-step guides written specifically for beginners in economic research.
| Tool | Purpose | Why It Helps Economics Students | Guides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zotero | Reference management & PDF annotation | One-click import from RePEc, SSRN, NBER, Google Scholar; highlight and take notes inside papers; perfect bibliographies in seconds |
Zotero Best Practices Cleaning Up Your Library |
| Obsidian | Networked note-taking | Create a connected personal knowledge base (link concepts across papers, methods, and courses) |
Coming Soon |
| Python | Data cleaning, analysis & automation | Reproduce empirical results, clean datasets, or analyze your own Zotero reference list | Coming soon |
| VSCode | Code editor and compiler | Write, run, and preview code for any language | Coming soon |
| Jupyter Notebook | Flexible development environment for notebooks, code, and data | Compartmentalized coding tailored for data science. | Coming soon |
| GitHub | Version control & collaboration | Track changes to code, LaTeX papers, and research projects; easy collaboration with advisors or co-authors |
A Crash Course in GitHub |
| AI Tools (Grok, Claude, etc.) |
Literature synthesis & coding help | Summarize dense papers, debug Python scripts, brainstorm identification strategies | Coming soon |
| pandoc | Converting files between formats | Create content in tools that suite your workflow and convert them to formate necessary for final output. | Coming soon |
Last updated: April 2026