Why Can't Penn Place its students into MIT/ Chicago's Economics PhD Program?

coase
Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:05:27 +0000

This is one of the least-edifying theads I have read. Really, barrons, quoting a “job rumors” site as evidence that several Penn faculty are leaving is a bit much. And even if they were leaving, it is not the end of the world. Should we conclude that Wisconsin’s Economics Department is falling apart because so many game theory/IO people have left (yes, actually left) in the last few years? Che, Haile, Hendel and Samuelson all left, never to return. There will always be churning. Moreover, in the RW case, there are two things to note. First, Wisconsin had to pay him so much to come that they had to get the B School to pay part of the salary. Second, there were joint career issues, and they had to agree to hire his wife, too.

I also have to respond to pizzagirl’s post #37

"The people who aren’t very bright conclude that “Harvard does better in placing students into Program Y because 50 of the 60 Y are from Harvard.” That’s the dumb way of thinking about things. The smart way is realizing that only 25% of the Harvard people got into their program of choice whereas 100% of Penn people got into their program of choice. The fact that there may have been 190 other Penn people who went and did different things is irrelevant. They didn’t want to be in Y, so who cares?

Scary that “bright” people don’t get this."

It is absolutely relevant what the other people do. Suppose that 200 people matriculated at each school with the goal of going to grad school. At one school, all 200 received mentoring that convinced them to pursue that dream. The other school just identified the 10 most promising students, gave them intensive mentoring, and essentially told the rest to get lost. So, it may matter what the 190 others do and why.