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The collapse of the econ PhD job market

chrisbrunet.com

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Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#191

Post by Matthyze »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #163
DebtDeflation wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. My undergrad was in Economics (a long time ago). There was a time I thought about doing a PhD, but ended up doing an MS in Quant Finance instead. It's hard to believe that anyone can take a DSGE model seriously as a model of how the economy works. For the unaware - graduate level Economics is nothing like pop Economics, it's essentially an applied math degree. But the math in question is extremely wonky. Mostly…

I just went through the DSGE wiki page [1]. It says the following about the model, which if true, then I can see why it is an completely unserious model. > Below is an example of the set of assumptions a DSGE is built upon: > Perfect competition in all markets > All prices adjust instantaneously > Rational expectations > No asymmetric information > The competitive equilibrium is Pareto optimal > Firms are identical a…

Are these not the 'friction can be ignored' assumptions of economics? They are, of course, blatantly false. But that doesn't stop such models from effectively modelling real-world behavior.

Granted, I know a slight bit about general equilibrium theory, but nothing about DSGE.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#192

Post by ls612 »

Retric wrote: post #43
ls612 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory you are discussing (grad micro 101 equilibrium existence) is not actually crazy if you think about what the mathematical assumptions actually imply. Really the economic assumptions boil down to "small changes in prices lead to small changes in demand" and the math is just rigorously defining small in terms of a general topology.

Small price changes don’t necessarily lead to small results. There’s a reason companies advertise 19.99 not 20 which has been experimentally verified many times. People simply act irrationally, which is a fundamental issue when trying to treat economics as math.

Falling back to "people are irrational", in the economic sense of rational (ie not having complete, transitive, and reflexive preferences) quickly leads to any economic claim being unfalsifiable.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#193

Post by catlover76 »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #155
smallmancontrov wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia didn't choose trickle-down policy. Quite the opposite -- that was you guys, after you purged all the leftist economists in the McCarthy era. In fact, the think-tank driven economics departments of recent years are so notoriously to the right of most academic faculty that this is a point of frequent conflict.

This wasn't a response to any of his arguments. I am interested in what people have to say about them though. 1. DEI and identity politics prioritization 2. cost

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Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#194

Post by LPisGood »

harvey9 wrote: post #154
michaelt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most phd programmes are very, very low fat when it comes to salaries. An academic CS department has to attract PhD level talent in hot areas like ML while only paying $30k a year.

Is there a long term financial payoff, or does it mostly attract people who are choosing academia over commercial for some other reason?

A little of column A and a little of column B. There is prestige in getting a PhD. There is also access and unique networking opportunities.

On the purely financial side, many top students work internships during the summers and make 40 or 50 thousand dollars during that time in addition to their academic stipend.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#195

Post by nradov »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #166
reactordev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more aggressive than that. It’s an intentional dismantling of higher education overall.

Yeah, where do people think Technology Growth comes from. GOP is all Growth, Growth, Growth, will save us, but hey lets poison the well from which it flows. All AI growth today, is actually from Academia from 20 years ago.

Growth comes from many sources. The supply-side economics wing of the GOP would claim that lower taxes and smaller, less intrusive government will allow for a higher private sector growth rate. There may be some truth to that, although the effects are probably limited compared to the development of disruptive new technologies.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#196

Post by judahmeek »

Konnstann wrote: post #189
supportengineer wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their acceptance rate is in the 25% range. Clearly the demand is there, so why is there a "fiscal situation"? In the mid 90's I went to a university that had cafeteria-style food, and dorms with no air conditioning. You don't need Waygu beef and massages in order to teach students. There shouldn't be any "fiscal situation" in higher education. What is a university anyway? It's some buildings and classrooms with profe…

You forgot about administrators, who are climbing in number relative to the number of students for no good reason.

Prove it.

For your convenience, here's a link to a conversation started by someone else saying the same thing & then actually providing sources (that don't necessarily support their claim): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45466504

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#197

Post by thfuran »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #72
lumost wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does point to one of the problems the article highlights. The US graduates 1385 PhDs in economics for 400 faculty positions. Those faculty positions face global competition. While it's a net benefit to US institutions to have the best tenured professors in the world, the US must also deal with the less than fully employed US PhD graduates.

> The US graduates 1385 PhDs in economics for 400 faculty positions. Those faculty positions face global competition. If correct thats actually a pretty good ratio. In science you basically don't get a faculty position after the PhD, which lasts 5-7 years. You have to do a postdoc. Used to be 2-3 years, now its more like 5-6. To the extent its rare for any new faculty to be under the age 35.

How is the length of the postdoc a factor? Next year there's going to be another graduating class and again the year after.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#198

Post by typicalhnbs »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #93
reactordev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more aggressive than that. It’s an intentional dismantling of higher education overall.

Higher education pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity, at the same time as birth rate decline post-2008 began hitting, while raising prices +93% on average since 2008. That's not a great way to survive.

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Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#199

Post by legostormtroopr »

bikezen wrote: post #181
kelipso wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s there to discuss any more? There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments. “Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven). Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it.…

Have you considered that it's not filtering for conservatives, but conservatives are self-selecting out or can't cut it at all? Isn't liberal arts degree a literal punchline to so many on the right, yet you cant figure out why that might skew left? > maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven Huh, wonder why this worl…

> Have you considered that … conservatives are self-selecting out or can't cut it at all?

When the ingroup is underrepresented the question is “how can we get more ingroup in”.

But when the outgroup is underrepresented it’s met with “maybe outgroup just isn’t as good”.

Eg. women in tech, men in nursing; conservatives vs liberals in academia.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#200

Post by mathteddybear »

mjhay wrote: post #112
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Data science wasn't even a degree you could get 20 years ago. It was called statistics

No. Data science is different than statistics, because it is done on computers. It also uses machine learning algorithms instead of statistical algorithms. These advances, and the shedding of generations of restrictive cruft - frees data scientists to craft answers that their bosses want to hear - proving the superiority of data science over statistics.

yeah, we called that data mining, decision systems, and whatnot... mapreduce was as fresh and hot as the Paul Graham's essays book... folks were using Java over python, due to some open source library from around the globe...

essentially, provided you were at a right place in a right time, you could get a BSc in it

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