Colin Williams

Executive Summary

Colin Williams’s job market site (williamsca.github.io) is well-built for the 2026-2027 economics hiring cycle. The Tufte CSS design is clean and scholarly, the research descriptions are substantive, and the core materials a hiring committee needs – CV, job market paper, references – are all present and reachable. The site communicates a clear identity: an urban/public economist with a strong JMP on mobile home zoning and municipal regulation.

The highest-value changes before the market opens are:

1. Fix the invisible profile photo on mobile. The Tufte CSS margin-note pattern hides the headshot entirely on narrow screens. A committee member checking the site on a phone at a conference will see no photo.
2. Add “Trade” to the homepage fields description to match the CV, which lists Urban and Spatial Economics, Public Economics, and Trade.
3. Link the JMP directly from the job market announcement, so a reader does not have to scroll past the bio to find it.

Everything else is refinement, not repair.

Page Inventory

All pages returned HTTP 200. Key linked documents verified: JMP PDF (200, 727KB), CV PDF (200), Impact Fees PDF (200, 361KB), JMP Markdown (200), Flat Fees slides (Dropbox 302 redirect, normal). Content retrieved via Firecrawl; rendered screenshots captured via uxtest with Playwright/Chromium.

Visual Inspection

Homepage – Desktop (1280x800)

The desktop layout uses Tufte CSS’s characteristic wide left column with a narrower right margin for sidenotes and images. The profile photo appears in the right margin alongside the bio text. Navigation links (CV, Writing, Teaching, Resources) are right-aligned in the header. Typography is serif-based and readable. The overall effect is clean and scholarly – appropriate for an economics job market candidate.

Homepage – Mobile (390x844)

On mobile, the layout collapses to a single column. The navigation items wrap below the name. Text is readable and well-sized. However, the profile photo is not displayed – only the Tufte CSS margin-toggle symbol is visible. This is the most important visual finding: a hiring committee member viewing the site on a phone will not see Colin’s face.

CV Page – Desktop (1280x800)

The CV page is clean and well-structured. The “Download PDF” button is prominently placed next to the CV heading. Section headings (Education, Fields of Interest, Working Papers, etc.) use italic serif type that is legible and visually distinct. The layout follows the same Tufte CSS column structure as the homepage.

What Is Working

Identity and positioning. The homepage immediately communicates who Colin is: a sixth-year PhD candidate in Economics at UVA, working in urban and public economics. The Lincoln Institute fellowship is mentioned and linked, adding external validation.

Job market signal. The bold job market statement with three named conferences (UEA, SEA, AREUEA-ASSA) is prominent and current.

Paper descriptions. The abstracts are detailed and substantive. The JMP abstract clearly states the research question, identification strategy, key statistics, and main finding. These read like well-crafted professional abstracts, not vague summaries.

Machine-readable paper versions. Offering a Markdown version of the JMP and Impact Fees paper “for LLMs and other machine readers” is forward-thinking and shows technical awareness.

CV page. Well-organized, with a prominent PDF download button. Committee members listed with full contact information. The dagger notation for scheduled conferences is a nice touch.

Writing page. The blog demonstrates intellectual breadth (Roman epigraphy, nursing labor markets, manufactured housing productivity, book reviews). The most relevant entries – “Productivity in Manufactured Housing” and “The New Dynamics of Fiscal Federalism” – connect to the research agenda and signal engagement with the broader field.

Resources page. Sharing an imputed HMDA dataset with DOI (Zenodo) and replication code (GitHub) signals commitment to reproducibility.

Design. Tufte CSS is a strong choice for an academic site – it is clean, readable, and signals aesthetic literacy without being flashy.

Prioritized Findings

Now – Fix before the market opens

1. Profile photo invisible on mobile. Page: Homepage. Evidence class: Verified defect (mobile screenshot). The Tufte CSS margin-toggle pattern hides marginnote content on narrow viewports. The profile photo is inside a margin note, so it disappears on mobile. Only the toggle symbol is visible. A committee member checking the site on a phone at a conference, a dinner, or between talks will not see the photo. Fix: Move the profile image out of the marginnote span, or add a CSS rule that displays it inline on small screens. This likely requires editing the Jekyll template or adding a media query to the site’s stylesheet.

2. Homepage fields description omits “Trade.” Page: Homepage vs. CV. Evidence class: Verified defect (content comparison). The homepage says “My research in urban and public economics.” The CV lists fields of interest as “Urban and Spatial Economics, Public Economics, Trade.” Trade is missing from the homepage. This matters because some search committees use field keywords to filter candidates, and a trade-interested department might not click through from the homepage alone. Fix: Add Trade to the homepage research description. Consider: “My research in urban economics, public economics, and trade examines how state and federal policies affect local governments…”

3. No direct JMP link in the job market announcement. Page: Homepage. Evidence class: Strategic option. The bold job market statement lists conferences but does not link to the paper itself. The visitor must scroll down to the Working Papers section to find the JMP. For a busy reader, a direct link in the announcement would reduce friction. Fix: Add a link such as “I will present my job market paper at the following conferences.”

Next – Strengthen before heavy traffic

4. “Flat Fees” paper has no PDF available. Page: Homepage. Evidence class: Confirm with owner. The “State Law, Local Finances, and Housing Markets” paper has only a Dropbox link to 2025 SEA slides – no full paper PDF. If this paper is circulating or if committees might want to read it, adding a PDF link would help. If it is not yet ready for distribution, this is fine as-is, but you might add “Draft available upon request” to signal availability.

5. “Retailer Congestion” paper has no links at all. Page: Homepage. Evidence class: Confirm with owner. The co-authored paper with Yooseon Hwang has an abstract but no PDF, slides, or Markdown link. Same consideration as above: if a committee member wants to see the paper, there is no way to access it from the site. Consider adding a PDF or noting availability.

6. Paper figure images lack alt text. Page: Homepage. Evidence class: Verified defect (HTML inspection). The margin-note images for each paper (boundary_lumberton_nc.png, event_study_sq_ft_bins_ln.png, exp_cap_cur_dbt_pcap.png) all have alt="". Adding descriptive alt text (e.g., “Map showing mobile home density at municipal boundary in Lumberton, NC”) improves accessibility for screen readers and helps search engine indexing.

7. APPAM presentation appears only on the CV, not the homepage. Page: Homepage vs. CV. Evidence class: Confirm with owner. The CV lists an APPAM Annual Meeting presentation for 2026 (marked as scheduled). The homepage conference list includes only UEA, SEA, and AREUEA-ASSA. If APPAM is for a different paper, this is correct and the homepage is specifically about the JMP. If it is also a JMP presentation, add it to the homepage list.

Later – Housekeeping and enhancements

8. Consider adding a Google Scholar profile link. Page: Homepage or CV. Evidence class: Strategic option. A Google Scholar link helps committees find citation counts and related work quickly. Many candidates include this alongside their email.

9. Page title could be more descriptive for search results. Page: Homepage. Evidence class: Strategic option. The HTML <title> is “Colin Williams.” When this appears in a browser tab or Google search result, it gives no context. Consider “Colin Williams – Economics PhD Candidate, University of Virginia” for the homepage title. The meta description is already good (“Colin Williams, economics researcher at the University of Virginia focusing on urban and public economics”).

10. No last-updated date on the site. Page: All. Evidence class: Strategic option. The footer says only “This site was built using Tufte CSS.” Adding a last-updated date (even just a month/year) signals to visitors that the content is current. This is especially useful during the job market when committees want to know they are seeing up-to-date information.

11. Teaching page could be richer for teaching-focused positions. Page: Teaching. Evidence class: Strategic option. The page lists TA positions clearly, including Head TA roles. For positions where teaching matters heavily, adding a brief teaching statement, evaluation scores, or a note about independent teaching experience (if any) would strengthen this section. For research-focused positions, the current page is adequate.

Cross-Page Consistency

Unknowns and Limitations

• No accessibility testing performed. The alt-text finding is from HTML inspection only. Keyboard navigation, screen reader behavior, and WCAG conformance were not tested.
• No analytics reviewed. Visitor counts, traffic sources, search queries, and time-on-page are unknown.
• Mobile screenshot is viewport-only. The mobile capture shows the initial view; scrolled sections were not captured on mobile.
• CV PDF not inspected. The downloadable PDF was verified to load (HTTP 200) but its content was not compared line-by-line against the HTML CV page.
• Link validation was a spot-check. The five most important links were verified. Links to external professors’ pages and coauthor sites were not tested.
• No real visitor feedback. All assessments of how a hiring committee member would experience the site are inferences, not observed behavior.

Next Actions

1. Fix the mobile photo (finding 1). Check where the profile image markup lives in the Jekyll template and add a fallback for narrow viewports.
2. Add Trade to the homepage fields (finding 2). One-line text edit.
3. Link the JMP from the job market announcement (finding 3). One-line markup edit.
4. Decide on paper availability (findings 4-5). For each paper without a PDF: add a link, or add “Draft available upon request.”
5. Add alt text to paper images (finding 6). Three image tags to update.
6. Consider adding Google Scholar link and page title update (findings 8-9) when convenient.

Method

Pages were retrieved via Firecrawl (content extraction) on 2026-10-23. Rendered screenshots were captured via uxtest (Playwright/Chromium) using gpt-4o for browser-step decisions at desktop (1280x800) and mobile (390x844) viewports. Key document links were verified via HTTP HEAD requests. Cross-page consistency was checked by comparing extracted text across all five pages. The review followed an editorial inspection rubric focused on job market readiness; no synthetic-visitor task studies or human usability testing were performed. Screenshots and page extracts are preserved in the study’s data/ directory.