Welcome to Plot & Policy
Charting my journey through spatial economics and beyond
This is a migration of the inaugural post from the older ianhelfrich.com WordPress site, dated March 7, 2025. Kept here as an honest archive of where the public writing started. The Plot & Policy framing has since merged into this hub’s /writing section.
Hi there, and welcome to my corner of the internet.
I’m Ian, a spatial economist navigating the thrilling (and occasionally chaotic) waters of the job market. This blog, Plot & Policy, is my digital lab notebook. A space to document my research, share lessons learned, and spark conversations with peers, mentors, and curious minds alike.
What to expect here
- Research in progress. From half-baked ideas to polished project updates, I’ll unpack the how and why behind my work in spatial economics. Urban labor markets, regional policy impacts, the quirks of geospatial data.
- Tools of the trade. Coding snippets (Python, R, Julia, ArcPy), workflow notes, GIS mapping experiments. Even economists need to debug sometimes.
- Job market diaries. Honest reflections on applications, interviews, and the surreal art of selling your research.
- Literature in focus. Sharp but fair critiques of new papers, plus deep dives into classic economic theory through a spatial lens.
Why I’m doing this
The job market is equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. By sharing the journey, the successes and the stumbles, I hope to demystify the process for others while building a community of thinkers who care about where economics happens, not just how.
Plus, writing about my work forces me to think harder, code cleaner, and map smarter. Cheaper than therapy, more legible than a notebook in a drawer.
Postscript, May 2026: the “job market” framing dated. I went independent and the writing here became less about applications and more about working papers. The spirit holds.