Intellectual Curiosity. You like to explore ideas, you want to better understand how the economy works, and you want to come up with answers to puzzl

Beware of Econ Grad School - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe

submited by

Style Pass

2024-11-29 18:30:05

Intellectual Curiosity. You like to explore ideas, you want to better understand how the economy works, and you want to come up with answers to puzzles and problems in the field of economics.

Lifestyle. You want to produce economics papers, you want autonomy, and you want your only professional interactions to be with other economics professors.

Unless you picked “lifestyle,” my advice is to do something other than go for a Ph.D in economics. Other goals are best served by doing something else, most likely pursuing a career in business. For example, if you are successful in business, you can move “sideways” into a role in economic policy.

In hindsight, my decision to go to graduate school was a mistake. My primary motivation was intellectual curiosity, and econ grad school worked against that.

I went to MIT in 1976, and I finished my dissertation in 1980. Meantime, the professors there did their best to stifle my intellectual curiosity.