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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

#321

Post by BigGreenJorts »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #164
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…

I agree with you about the excesses of university luxury, but the fact that it's just teachers and students is what makes it expensive in fact. As technology and labor-saving devices make everything more productive, human labor gets relatively more expensive over time. It's more expensive than it was 30 years ago, much more than 60 years ago. Any business that relies on specifically human labor that can't be automate…

The excesses of luxury at universities are for the purposes of attracting sources of revenue - undergraduate students.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#322

Post by idiotsecant »

nradov wrote: post #195
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They would claim that, and they would be wrong. As has been repeatedly and exhaustively demonstrated.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#323

Post by idiotsecant »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #287
quantumgarbage wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't a vague strawman, that's a great point. Economists work from assumptions, which can be flawed in two ways: they can be blatantly wrong (see the work Kahneman and Tversky did on the rational individual hypothesis) and they can be unfalsifiable (you can't always gather data about the assumption itself). There is a good essay on this from Tirole (yet a very mainstream economist) here: https://www.tse-fr.eu/si…

> Economists work from assumptions All models start with givens…

Which is fine, as long as your assumptions are good models of reality. When your assumptions are essentially articles of faith your models tend to be about as good as the guys who interpret patterns in chicken bones.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#324

Post by tzs »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76

The "Dismal Science"? It has never been a science. You can't run controlled experiments outside of small microeconomic scenarios, so nothing is falsifiable or repeatable. It's all just arguing about correlation and causation.

By that argument in addition to meteorology that another commenter already mentioned (and more generally atmospheric science), astronomy, most of geology, cosmology, astrophysics, most planetary science, most oceanography, and seismology are not sciences.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#325

Post by monkeyelite »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #317
monkeyelite wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professors have told me it doesn’t matter which administration is in - they just need to rebrand their project to meet funding requirements. Isn’t that a scary thought? We have no visibility and they are skilled enough to transform into any form.

No, it's not a scary thought that physicists and chemists don't care whether a Republican or Democrat is in office.

It’s scary that:

1. Our top researchers are wasting their time and energy promoting projects for grants. 2. Any attempt by the public to oversee or guide these grants is thwarted by smart people. 3. If you try to learn more about where the money is going or what’s being counted as science people on HN will call it “anti-intellectual propoganda”.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#326

Post by cyberax »

jostylr wrote: post #310
cyberax wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

As far as I can tell, Austrians believe that analyzing based on individual preferences and actions is the key. I haven't made it very far into Mises Human Action, but I gather that was the starting point and Mises developed many theorems based on that. So if you say that allowing individuals to maximize their preferred choices given the constraints around them is "the market" and artificially restricting those choice…

If I were to summarize the insights of economic schools of thought, then we get:

1. Keynesianism: "Your spending is my income, so when there's not enough spending, the government needs to step in".

2. Monetarism: "The monetary supply directly controls the economy and is the primary reason for economic phenomena".

3. Austrian economy: the market god, the market is king, all hail the market.

The first two approaches provide actionable models and make predictions. As with all models, they have limits of applicability, and they are often wrong to some degree.

Meanwhile, Austrian economics is always right. And when it's wrong, it's because you haven't done it hard enough.

> If you think people in the market do things that are nasty when all the actions are voluntary (and that certainly can happen), shouldn't you be even more skeptical of those who are willing to engage in violence to force the things they want to come to be to happen?

Well, let's look at a particular example: pollution regulation. Laws limit the almighty Market by forcing compaines to clean up their waste.

Another example is monopolism. In the view of the Austrian economy "school" it is _always_ the result of government actions. And monopolies wouldn't exist otherwise, even for things like water supply and sewer.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#327

Post by searine »

monkeyelite wrote: post #325
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not a scary thought that physicists and chemists don't care whether a Republican or Democrat is in office.

It’s scary that: 1. Our top researchers are wasting their time and energy promoting projects for grants. 2. Any attempt by the public to oversee or guide these grants is thwarted by smart people. 3. If you try to learn more about where the money is going or what’s being counted as science people on HN will call it “anti-intellectual propoganda”.

You have no idea what you are talking about, and yes you are buying into (or actively promoting) anti-intellectualism.

>1. Our top researchers are wasting their time and energy promoting projects for grants.

There are all kinds of scientists, some do the research, some do the writing, some do the grantsmanship. Getting money to fund an idea is not lesser than, it is often the hardest part. It takes understanding an communication skills to convince a panel of peer-experts that your ideas are good enough to give millions of dollars to.

> 2. Any attempt by the public to oversee or guide these grants is thwarted by smart people.

There is a tremendous amount of publicly available oversight at every step, including opportunity for public commentary.

Just because you personally don't know it exists, doesn't mean that it does not exist.

>3. If you try to learn more about where the money is going or what’s being counted as science people on HN will call it “anti-intellectual propoganda”.

Again. Its all public info. Its all publicly presented. If you ask, scientists will leap at the chance to tell you what they did and how they spent that money.

Please. PLEASE. I am begging you. Learn about a subject before forming an opinion about it.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#329

Post by rayiner »

lkrubner wrote: post #256

"Ordinary people—who watched their rent, groceries, and gas bills skyrocket—saw a profession more invested in protecting Democratic policy narratives than in telling the truth. The result is a self-inflicted torching of trust." This post is ridiculously partisan. The head of the Fed was Republican, the majority of the Fed has always been Republican, the money-printing response to the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020 w…

Economists at the Fed skew Democrat 10 to 1. https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-fall/political-affiliat.... In a 2006 study of economists, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 2.5 to 1: https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/KS_PublCh06.pdf

Although it’s not really a partisan issue. Establishment republicans and establish democrats both support the central banking system.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#330

Post by rayiner »

erxam wrote: post #285
lkrubner wrote: post #256

"Ordinary people—who watched their rent, groceries, and gas bills skyrocket—saw a profession more invested in protecting Democratic policy narratives than in telling the truth. The result is a self-inflicted torching of trust." This post is ridiculously partisan. The head of the Fed was Republican, the majority of the Fed has always been Republican, the money-printing response to the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020 w…

Economists always do this shit. They talk about the unimpeded free market being some sort of saintly state of being, convince governments to implode themselves, everything goes to shit and… guess what? Apparently the economists had nothing to do with any of it? Also, just calling the majority of economists 'Republican' doesn't explain it completely. The truth is that the Austrian School of Economics (Mises, Friedman,…

I strongly suspect most practicing economists are Keynesians.
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