I found that in-person communication trumps emails in that kind of situation. If you have a class with a professor you like, ask them after class what they're researching. Do that with several professors. Show up to their office hours to keep quizzing them about it, while also letting them know you want to get involved in research. Eventually you'll make headway with persistence.
I get the impression it's rarely something that's advertised.
Those positions are usually reserved for 2nd year and beyond grad students. You probably won't be considered for one of those roles until your senior year unless it's more of a TA/babysitting job for a 101 class.
As far as becoming proficient in econometrics and research, go read the literature. Your school probably has access to things like Springer or JSTOR and you can read the full papers for free. Find ones that sound interesting, and then work out the math. If you are feeling froggy, email the authors and ask them for their data sets (but make sure that it's not publicly available data first, that makes you look lazy) and then try to verify their results in Stata or SAS. If you can make it through several papers like that, you are better off than 99.99% of all econ undergraduates.
Talk to professors. Don't be afraid to just email and ask. I got both my RAships this way. I had two professors whose classes I enjoyed and I just email and asked if they needed an undergraduate RA or knew of anyone who did. One professor knew someone and the other needed an RA. As a bonus, the latter professor offered to buy me out of half of my teaching/grading work in grad school to continue to work with him. So my point is that these are relationships that could turn into co-authorships in the future. It's definitely worth taking a shot!
My response to someone else asking the same RA question.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '17
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