Programs > Student Internships

10-week programs for students working in areas that advance our mission.

AIER’s Internships are unparalleled professional opportunities for students considering careers in economic research, academia, or the private sector. They provide college students and recent graduates the opportunity to work closely with staff on projects that align with both their interests and AIER’s mission. Whether it’s contributing to scholarly research, policy analysis, or editorial writing, our interns gain invaluable exposure.

Our interns have leveraged their experiences to launch careers at organizations like The World Bank, The Institute for Justice, Deloitte, Morgan Stanley, IBM, and many other research institutes and companies across the world. A significant number of our former interns now teach and research at well-respected universities across the country.

Research

At the core of the AIER internship program is a self-developed research project, in which each intern develops their research interest into the foundation of an academic conference presentation and/or journal article. Interns also learn how to effectively communicate their results to both the scholarly community and the general public.

While building out their project, interns are coached on how to develop research ideas, how to ask and justify interesting and important research questions, select an appropriate methodology, present their findings to scholars and peers, and receive critical feedback.

At the end of their internship, each intern presents their final product to AIER staff and visiting scholars and receives valuable feedback on further development. They leave not only with a research product, but a new understanding of what engaging in deep, careful, and detailed analysis of issues relevant to the life and liberty of individuals – not just to academic discussion – entails.

Workshops

Through a series of workshops, interns learn and practice the essentials of academic and popular writing, various research methods, fundamental and advanced techniques in econometrics, economic analysis through AIER economic indicators and Bloomberg terminal data, blockchain technology and cryptocurrency trading, and more.

The workshops are led by experts from AIER and related organizations and are generally conducted face-to-face, so individualized feedback and mentoring is prioritized.