Predoctoral Research Assistant (Finance)

Location: College Station, Texas, United States

Salary: $4,166.67 per month

Company

Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School is an academic institution focused on business education and research, including finance, economics, and related social sciences.

What you will do

• Fact-check and verify a narrative record of postwar federal R&D tax policy using congressional, Treasury, Joint Committee on Taxation, legislative, archival, and presidential sources.
• Conduct archival and legislative research and incorporate evidence from hearings and revenue estimates.
• Help classify policy changes as exogenous or endogenous to short-run macroeconomic conditions with the principal investigator and co-project lead.
• Assemble, maintain, and document supporting data series, sources, and coding decisions so the dataset is replicable.
• Rewrite narrative entries, assist with working paper introduction and methodology sections, and conduct targeted literature reviews.
• Prepare tables, figures, appendices, paper edits, data retrieval, and other short-term research-related materials for faculty.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in economics or finance completed by the start date.
• No prior experience is required.
• Excellent writing and editing skills, including the ability to explain technical material in plain prose.
• Comfort reading dense primary-source documents, including legislative and legal text.
• Working proficiency with Excel for assembling, cleaning, and documenting data series.
• Meticulous attention to detail, high ethical standards, and tolerance for verification work.
• Ability to work independently, think critically, cooperate with others, manage multiple tasks, learn new skills, and exercise discretion when handling sensitive or confidential information.

Nice to have

• Programming and data-management skills in Stata, Python, R, SAS, or MATLAB.
• Coursework in econometrics, statistics, public economics, public finance, macroeconomics, innovation, or fiscal policy.
• Quantitative research experience and experience with legal, legislative, archival, or historical primary-source documents.
• Experience with LaTeX/Overleaf, copy editing, or bibliographic reference management.
• Interest in pursuing graduate study in economics or finance.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time, 11-month appointment on a funded research project measuring the economic returns to federal investment in R&D.
• May require weekend and/or after-hours work; travel may be required.
• Includes a funded research visit to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
• Benefits include medical, prescription, dental, vision, life, AD&D, flexible spending, and long-term disability insurance.
• Includes paid holidays, monthly sick and vacation leave, retirement enrollment, wellness programs, professional development, and tuition assistance.

Hiring process

• Submit complete application data or attach a complete resume; an incomplete submission may be rejected.
• A cover letter and resume are encouraged and may be uploaded under CV/Resume.
• Employment is contingent on credential verification and completion of a criminal history investigation.