Economics at MIT vs. Yale

RenTheSecond
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:21:32 +0000

What the general public probably doesn’t understand is that academic economists develop their reputations for doing highly abstract research. Regardless of the field (eg micro, macro, metrics, IO, etc), theoretical work involves exploring how the properties of formal models react to changes in basic assumptions. Although these models would be inspired by real-world phenomena, a lay audience probably couldn’t identify most articles in (say) the Journal of Economic Theory as economics at all, much less distinguish “good” work from “bad” work. Even “applied” economics research involves replicating, building upon, and informing theoretical results, and it is still assumed that these individuals have mastered linear algebra, multivariable calculus, real analysis (for proof techniques), in addition to mathematics learned through economics coursework, since these are assumed (if not required) of any doctoral program that expects to send their graduates to academia.

Another misconception is that economics is all finance and macro (eg, forecasting growth, stock prices, etc). This may be what’s on the news, but if you open a recent issue of the American Economic Review (a very top journal), you’ll find that virtually any question regarding human behavior is fair game for economics, and its pattern of statistically testing the properties of axiomatic models. So while the studies shared in Freakonomics probably came as a surprise to most audiences, economists understand that these sorts of studies actually typify a whole branch of economic research (basically micro and behavioral).

To put things in perspective, as someone who’s taken three doctoral labor economics courses in the past two years (and several other non-labor doctoral econ courses), there’s been no mention of the rocketing unemployment rate, or any economic forecasting at all. A “star” macroeconomist or econometrician would be someone who either convincingly built or confirmed the analytical tools so that someone else can run the numbers.