$80-$200/hr economics and policy work, on your schedule
Referee a model's analysis the way you would a working paper. Flag the endogeneity, the unidentified model, the conclusion the data will not support. Your sense of what a number actually means is the work.
Trusted by top research companies
Hi, we're Zac and Jack, the founders of Terac. We want to talk to you directly, because you are the most important part of what we're building.
Terac is a community of experts. People who have spent years getting good at something specific and hard. The world is about to need more of you, not less. As AI takes on more of the world's work, the bottleneck shifts to the people who actually know what they're talking about.
Expert labor is the rarest resource in the world right now, and it is shockingly hard to find. The companies that need an economist's eye on a shaky identification strategy spend weeks chasing people, paying placement fees, and settling for whoever is available. Meanwhile thousands of qualified people are sitting with knowledge that no one ever asks for.
That gap is what we're here to close. Every project that lands on Terac is routed to the people who actually know the answer, on their schedule, paid fairly, and only when the work is verified. No middleman taking a cut of your time. No vague gigs. No chasing checks.
We care about every single person in this community. If you join Terac, you're not a row in a database to us. We read the feedback. We answer the emails. We will fight for you when a customer is being unreasonable, and we will be honest with you when something on our side is broken. The quality of this panel is our entire company, and we owe you a serious bar.
If you've made it this far, here is what we're asking: claim your profile. Put your expertise on the record. Let the world's most ambitious teams come find you for the work only you can do.
Economics questions
Still curious? Write to us at support@terac.com.
Subfield specialists are often more valuable than generalists, since models struggle most with domain-specific reasoning chains. Demand varies week to week, but a PhD or published record in your subfield qualifies you for the highest-complexity tasks. Indicate your specializations at onboarding and you will only be matched within your expertise.
No active designation is required. We qualify economists on demonstrated expertise: a graduate degree, a publication history, or verifiable industry experience as a research economist, policy analyst, or quant. A lapsed CFA or FSA still signals depth and is noted on your profile, but it is not a gate.
Yes. Tasks often cover AI analysis of real institutional content, including central bank reasoning, fiscal scoring, and competition economics. You never produce advice for a real client or regulator. You assess whether the reasoning is sound and applies the right framework. Every task is scoped so you can decline any that feel outside your comfort zone.
A range: causal inference write-ups (DiD, RDD, IV designs), structural model expositions, welfare analysis narratives, and policy memo drafts. You may also build worked examples, such as walking through an identification strategy or critiquing an instrument choice. The task type shows before you accept, so you can pick your strongest areas.
No. You never endorse a policy position or fabricate data, both of which the AEA Code bars. You critique AI reasoning, not author research or advocacy, so it sits outside typical conflict-of-interest rules. Review your institution's outside-activity disclosure requirements independently, but most economists treat this as peer review or consulting, not research authorship.
Why your expertise matters
Economic AI reads correlation as causation, runs a welfare analysis that ignores general equilibrium, and writes a demand curve that violates basic theory. Catching that takes someone who has defended an identification strategy, not a model trained on observational patterns. Your corrections teach these tools what a credible inference actually requires.
How pay works
Deep quantitative specialists in structural econometrics, mechanism design, or financial economics sit at the top of the $80-$200/hr band, as do published researchers. Work is remote and hourly, paid on verified task completion, not on a retainer. Pick up assignments when your schedule allows, with no minimum commitment.
What the work looks like
A sample of the economics and policy work you would pick up. Every project is scoped, remote, and paid on verified completion.
- Check an AI-drafted difference-in-differences analysis for parallel-trends violations and confounders the model failed to control for.
- Review a model's explanation of deadweight loss under a price ceiling and correct the misattributed consumer and producer surplus.
- Write a worked Becker-style rational crime model, narrating how a trained economist sets up and reads the optimization problem.
- Judge whether a model's central bank brief correctly describes transmission from the federal funds rate to inflation and output.
- Critique a model's market-structure analysis of a tech platform, flagging where it conflates Bertrand and Cournot predictions.
- Annotate an AI answer on instrumental variables, noting where the exclusion restriction fails and what a credible instrument looks like.
Specialties we match
Economics projects span a wide range of focus areas. Tell us where you go deep and we route the work that fits.
- Causal inference and identification strategies
- Econometrics (IV, DiD, RDD, synthetic control)
- Mechanism design and auction theory
- General equilibrium modeling (DSGE, CGE)
- Industrial organization and competition analysis
- Behavioral economics and experimental design
- Public finance and cost-benefit analysis
- Time-series and panel data methods
- Labor economics and wage determination
- Trade theory and policy modeling
- Welfare analysis and social choice
- Stata, R, and Python for empirical work
