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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

#221

Post by cyberax »

reducesuffering wrote: post #132
sarchertech wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Austrian school is economics for people who never learned calculus. That doesn’t mean they don’t have interesting things to say now and then, but it’s mostly just a collection of folk wisdom.

Keynesian Bernanke on famed Austrian Milton Friedman: "Among economic scholars, Friedman has no peer. His seminal contributions to economics are legion, including his development of the permanent-income theory of consumer spending, his paradigm-shifting research in monetary economics, and his stimulating and original essays on economic history and methodology." https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/2…

Friedman was a Chicago monetarist, not just an Austrian hack. Pure monetarism doesn't always work, as it ignores irrational behavior, but it's not _useless_. Monetary models work great in steady-state conditions for fine-tuning and in cases where the monetary supply results in high inflation.

The 2008 economic crisis demonstrated that brilliantly. The IS-LM model correctly predicted the outcome of fiscal expansion (lack of inflation, despite trillions in stimulus) and the futility of monetary measures (negative rates in Europe did not result in economic growth).

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#222

Post by cyberax »

Findeton wrote: post #117
cyberax wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a pure math major, and I took several economics classes. The whole field was very baffling for me. The most reliable model was the dead simple IS–LM, which is based on observations. But you don't really need a lot of math for it, so it's boring. As a result, researchers keep trying to generalize the microeconomic behavior of people to derive macroeconomic laws. Like we do with the ideal gas laws. And this produce…

Thing is, the part about using math for economics is highly debatable and that's why Austrian School of economics doesn't use it. From that perspective, we use ranking systems for our preferences, at the individual level, so using math for aggregate behaviour is just not well substantiated. This point of view comes from Carl Menger, which started the whole marginalist revolution.

> Austrian School of economics doesn't use it

Well, yeah. They're basically a cult with three rules:

1. The market is perfect.

2. If the market is not perfect, then it's the fault of the government.

3. If you have any questions, see 1.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#223

Post by array_key_first »

corimaith wrote: post #168
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 is just partisan conspirational nonsense. Modern Economics took the useful things from Marx and left the rest in the dustbin of history like it should. Nor do Economists advocate for "trickle-down" theory, the answer has more to do with where one is on the laffer curve. Economists clash frequently with other fields like social sciences because such fields continue to use unfalsifiable and highly flawed epistemic…

Economic theory in western nations is so hilariously skewed towards free market capitalist think that obvious models are just straight up missed, or sometimes obviously wrong conclusions are drawn. Most economics start with the understanding that the answer or cause is something about free market forces, and then work backwards.

For example, when talking about the economics of healthcare (or anything else, but lets start with healthcare), the conversation is approached from the get-go under the assumption that:

1. Healthcare is already a free market.

2. It is possible for healthcare to be a free market.

1. is just not true. Healthcare, in the US and and all developed nations, is not a free market. But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000.

And, for number 2, it's very debatable. IMO no, healthcare cannot be a free market, just by virtue of what healthcare is as a service. But that's debatable, I won't get into it.

Point is, we immediately start our economic understanding based off assumptions on top of assumptions that come from free market thinking, thinking around IP, thinking about consumer knowledge, thinking about access, etc.

We make absolutely wild and unsubstantiated claims for free, and nobody checks them.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#224

Post by array_key_first »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #215
harvey9 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In CS there's a long term payoff bc tech has the money to invest in R&D even in an economy like this one

The payout is very, very long term and honestly you probably don't come out ahead.

Starting your career 10 years earlier (effectively) and immediately progressing in your career probably gets you further. Especially if you look towards management, which is where the money is (usually, million dollar AI research salaries is a new thing).

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#225

Post by reactordev »

yongjik wrote: post #179
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

America's greatest conservative government pressured a private business to fire a comedian for a remark on the death of someone who was basically a celebrity troll. ...and they turn around and complain about liberals' "moral purity."

To them, he was a master of manipulation, exactly what they’re looking for. Someone who can spout racism and bigotry and drive listenership based on what crazy thing he’ll say next. Where does this sound familiar? It’s playbook man. That’s their business. I don’t condone any of what happened but he’s not someone we should be building statues of.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#226

Post by corimaith »

array_key_first wrote: post #223
corimaith wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just partisan conspirational nonsense. Modern Economics took the useful things from Marx and left the rest in the dustbin of history like it should. Nor do Economists advocate for "trickle-down" theory, the answer has more to do with where one is on the laffer curve. Economists clash frequently with other fields like social sciences because such fields continue to use unfalsifiable and highly flawed epistemic…

Economic theory in western nations is so hilariously skewed towards free market capitalist think that obvious models are just straight up missed, or sometimes obviously wrong conclusions are drawn. Most economics start with the understanding that the answer or cause is something about free market forces, and then work backwards. For example, when talking about the economics of healthcare (or anything else, but lets s…

>But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000.

Which economist are you referring to here? It's hard to even see what specific policy conclusions you're critiquing here, beyond a vague strawman against "free market assumptions".

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#227

Post by awesome_dude »

kenjackson wrote: post #188
kadushka wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this fact is well-known and has been widely discussed. The first two google search results provide the stats: https://students.bowdoin.edu/bowdoin-review/features/death-b... https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/admini...

The numbers are alarming, but I feel like seeing more details would be really helpful. For example MIT and CalTech both have numbers that indicate something like 7x more non-faculty staff than faculty. That sounds crazy, but is it? I'd love to know more detail about the distribution of people to those non-faculty roles. I feel like this is an example where we can get almost everyone behind reducing costs at college b…

I have a suspicion that as an entity such as a University (or government, or business, etc) gets larger, its bureaucracy/administrations needs grow (at a much faster rate)

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#228

Post by ls612 »

Retric wrote: post #210
ls612 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Irrational isn’t the same thing as unpredictable. Biology was forced to deal with the insanity of biochemistry because that’s what is actually happening. Economics can’t get away from the innate complexity of actual humans if it wants to be actually useful for more than just propaganda.

You misunderstand the difficulty. We don't have (and likely won't ever have) the ability to read people's thoughts and say what they were thinking when they made their choices. In order to do any analysis of human choices you must impose assumptions on the process because otherwise you can say that "they were thinking xyz" and there is no way to falsify that.

Economics chooses to impose assumptions that peoples observed choices are a better way to study their behavior than what they say, and so we look at the observable state of the world for an individual economic agent. You can do analysis of people whose preferences are not rational (in the strict mathematical sense that I described above) but you must choose what kind of irrationality they have. And that gives you the ability to assume any results. That isn't any way to do science. Rationality is the worst option except for all the rest as they say.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#229

Post by kelipso »

awesome_dude wrote: post #204
kelipso wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a current professor who has been in the same department for 15 years and the admin bloat thing is definitely real. Just tons of new people employed for who knows what. Maybe the numbers are out there maybe not (who is looking at them?) but it’s definitely not an imaginary thing or made up for political purposes.

An anecdote describing feels is political. This is why i want hard facts.

It’s not feels when admin has grown massively in staff while other staff, faculty and students remain the same lol. It’s really not interesting talking to someone who actively and proudly places their head in the sand.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#230

Post by colechristensen »

kenjackson wrote: post #201
colechristensen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sources of university funding and spending on administration has been broken for a long time. What does a graduate math program need? A building with some offices and classrooms, wifi, email service, maybe a couple of secretaries and janitors, office supplies, and salaries for students and researchers/instructors. What need does a math program have for any but the most basic administration? That's where all the m…

"You could cut university admin costs by 75% and lose nothing." People say that, but could you really? I'd love to see a breakdown on how you pull this off.

Cut the top 20 salaries in half and fire 10% of the staff who are not directly involved in academics (must teach, learn, or research) for starters. Sever any major athletics organization (i.e. football, basketball, etc) into a separate legal entity with something like a license fee to the university based on team revenue as a percentage so funds flow exclusively in one direction.

University admin work expands to the available workforce and I've heard first person accounts from long time senior university staff about admin employees who literally didn't do anything of any conceivable consequence.

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