Greg Mankiw seems to be arguing for a European-type separate master + PhD graduate Econ program– such as those at LSE, Oxford, Pompeu Fabra, Tinbergen Institute, and (I guess) the newish Paris School of Economics entity– rather than the US-type graduate PhD package, which comes with a (usually elective) master on the way (that is somewhat ironic, given the desire of the typical high-aspiring European place to ultimately emulate the US top places). In any case, assessing the total costs and benefits of these two alternatives remains a difficult empirical quest.
MR has linked to direct evidence that the History academic job market was hit way harder (e.g., this year lowest number of positions in a quarter century) than the Economics academic job market (and most likely than any other discipline’s job market), which is almost back to the pre-recession level. (My wise friend Daniel, the historian of science with whom I talked several times about this, was absolutely right in his intuitive assessment)
Awesome (albeit late) discovery. After reading Gelman’s WSJ story, I am decided to request a priori a “kill fee provision”, whenever I am asked again to write stuff for various non-scientific outlets; I had similar experiences with a couple of Romanian (some, not surprisingly, now defunct…) newspapers, and, in particular, with the (very surprisingly, still surviving…) Aarhus School of Business internal press. Except that I ended up wasting time and not getting any ‘kill fee’ for it. Sometimes you have to learn from your own mistakes.
Very well presented classic economic arguments for raising public college tuition fees by Gary Becker and Richard Posner. Digest them carefully, as they might appear counter-intuitive (witness the frequent nonsensical arguments against such tuition raises) even to intellectuals — those without training in and/or understanding of Economics.
As controversial as outputs of such activity might currently be, concretely gathering brains in such ‘intellectual ventures’–in fact: literally leading to brainstorming— is just awesome. The idea in itself is of course not new, Myhrvold just had the will– and financial means!– to implement it on such a scale
2 thoughts on “Econlinks: In degrees of awesomeness”
Give me the song or you're lying! :-).
El Profesor, if it counts, I love Hayek too :)<br />MM.
Give me the song or you're lying! :-).
El Profesor, if it counts, I love Hayek too :)<br />MM.