"Den som är väldigt stark måste också vara väldigt snäll." - Astrid Lindgren
LaTekonomer aims to accessibly provide Overleaf/LaTex templates to economists.
The goal is simple: let’s put all the things we use over and over again in one place, so that you can spend more time dreaming up cool projects and less time trawling through StackExhange, playing the game of “find where you’re missing a curly bracket,” or trying to ask ChatGPT your question in way that gets the output you want.
The templates include, but are not limited to to following:
- general math writing
- homework write-ups
- article write-ups with bibliographies
- professional but simple dark and light Beamer templates
- tables (including three-part tables with footnotes)
- figures
- and a few research project assignments
The research project assignments come from ECON 412 International Environmental Economics, a course taught at Yale University by Sam Kortum, for which Jillian Stallman has been teaching assistant in Fall 2023 and Fall 2024.
Many of these tables and figures are outputs of code provided in the R package ekonomR. ekonomR and LaTekonomer are designed to be complementary research templates, getting you moving forward on your project whether you’re at the stage of tinkering with your final figure captions or figuring out what Overleaf even is and how to switch your data from wide to long.
However, the use of LaTekonomer does not require ekonomR or vice versa.
Note: ekonomR is currently undergoing an overhaul as I merge two packages into a single workflow.
LaTex isn’t the only way to produce aesthetically appealing figures, tables, and commentary. The obvious competitor to a LaTex-based system is Markdown, which has lower overhead costs and better web integration.
You should be leaning towards LaTex if your ultimate output is an article, book, dissertation, or thesis. You might prefer Markdown if your ultimate output is a web page, notes for yourself, or homework writeup.
If you’re interested in exploring the Markdown world, check out The Markdown Guide, which integrates sublimely with R and GitHub. This README, for instance, is composed with Markdown. If you’re interested in Markdown and R, check out R Markdown: The Definitive Guide.
If you’re still planning on going through with LaTek, get started with LaTekonomer documentation
You can access the files directly via Overleaf or see the repository on GitHub.