I would strongly recommend that if you wanted to actually pursue a career in academia to not worry about studying merely Austrian economics, and trying to find the university that is best tailored towards your own views, but rather trying to go to as prestigious of a program as possible so that you can become a vehicle for the proliferation of correct economics. Don’t get worried about the “Austrian”, worry more about the quality of the education you are getting, and how it will aid you. The last thing that the proliferation of Austrian economics requires is yet another arrogent anti-intellectual who believes that anything that steps outside of the Austrian fold is a heresy that ought to be purged; instead, I would urge you to learn the economics that a career interacting with the mainstream would require.
Get a quality PhD in economics, not just Austrian economics.
This is a definately true. Moreover, even alleged “Austrian” programmes aren’t entirely Austrian, you’ll need to have all the math requisites and have to take all the usual courses. If you really want to do well in academia get into the top ranked PhD programme you can, whilst it may be more difficult and you may have to put your Austrians studies on hold for some time, at the end of the day your career and economic science will benefit from it. This means taking as much math as you can as an UG, speaking to teachers to get the best LORs you can get and possibly even getting a research assistant job somewhere. The other point that Lam mentioned is that you’ll have the most exposure to the biggest variety of economics this way. I’ve read some parts of Reisman’s Capitalism and he makes some terribly basic mistakes when it comes to his discussion of neoclassical economics. You don’t want to me making such mistakes.
I suggest that the OP look outside of the States to do a PhD, the US system is not only extortionaly expensive but utterly rubbish. You are marked not only on your research thesis, but also on a series of irrelevent exams, which has the duel impact of watering down the value of your thesis but is a complete waste of your time. It also meas that you have to find yourself a specific department that offers a relevent course. If you go aborad you don’t have to put up with that kind of nonsense.
But I would advice against doing a PhD unless you have endless amounts of wllpower. PhDs aren’t difficult intellectually, they are difficult because of the amount of self disipline required.
Granted, at an UG level, the US is far, far more expensive, and even for PhDs they’re more expensive. That said, if you excel in a PhD programme in the US, you’ve got a good shot of getting full funding, especially in a top programme. Keep in mind at a PhD level most universities have a vested interest in how well their students do, far more than they do with regard to undergraduates. Also, there’s a number of other grants you can get if you’re going to study in the US. As for quality, that’s just not true. There’s no contest between the top universities in the US and those outside the the States. If you’re going to go outside the USA, only to return once you’ve completed your graduate degree, the only places really worth considering are UCL, LSE, Oxbridge and perhaps Warwick. The first two are the best out of those, but, they’re run like American universities anyway. The only reason to go outside the USA for a PhD is that the universities outside the USA (perhaps excluding those in Asia) are easier to get into to. For example, I plan on going to LSE for my masters degree, and provided I do well at an undergraduate level, I’ve got a decent chance of getting in. On the other hand, I wouldn’t get into any comparable university over in the USA.
Are you sure about this? Because I’m pretty sure you’re talking nonsense, and most graduate students will most likely tell you the same.
Far more expensive, I know a guy a who came to the UK do do his doctorate and he says it has saved him at least $10,000.
You misunderstand me, I wasn’t having a go at the quality of the degee, as much as the structure of the degree system. In other countries universities it is based purely on the quality of the research (though admittedly often with the utterly outmoded viva exam) which gives the student a far greater degree of freedom. For example you don’t usually have to sit prelims in a British PhD.
As for quality institutions, there are plenty of institutions that rival even the Ivy League Universities. But it isn’t necessarily the institution that should drive your choice, but prospective supervisor and research resources. Indeed, that should - if you are smart - probably play a large role than choice of institution than the reputation of the institution itself, which is just vanity. That said, vanity is one of the main reasons to do a PhD anyway.
Yeah, British Universities need the money at the moment (student numbers are down); and foreign students are cash cows.
I can only speak from my own personal experience, I can’t speak for anyone else. But like I said, it isn’t the work that is the challenge, but maintaining will power and motivation. Three, if not four, years is a long time to study a single esoteric topic, and writing 100,000 words is a hell of an undertaking, and a great many people don’t ever submit because it is just so arduous. You haven’t done your masters yet? Well, if its a taught Masters, as opposed to an MRes or an MPhil, you will probably have to wite a 20,000 word dissertation (though some institutions only demand a 15,000 word diss). Even that is a major step up from an undergrad diss, which is typically 10-12,000. But even that is nothing to compare with trying to research and write a PhD. The fun novelty of the thing soon wares off (after about a month in my case) and then it is just a case of grinding away at it, and trying to keep motivated to get up in the morning. If I had my time over, I would have quit after the Masters.
Wow, all this makes me wonder how the hell Mises published the bucketload of books he did while juggling his job at the Chamber of Commerce, his University seminars and Private seminar among other things… The guy was a machine!
I don’t know much about the costs of living in the USA, so I’ll take your word for it. What I do know is this: if I were to go to a PhD programme in the UK it’d most likely be LSE or UCL, both of which are located in London. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the costs of living in London, but I’m not sure how it compares to places over in the USA. Also, from what I understand there’s a lot more opportunities for funding and TA/RA jobs over in the USA.
But as I’ve said, I only just finished the first year of my bachelors, so I’ve not looked at prices for many masters programmes, let alone PhDs.
Ah, OK, sorry for the misunderstanding. I already knew the systems were different. For example, in Continental Europe one generally picks a professor under whom they study, as opposed to the institution itself. But I wasn’t aware this was a better system. Nor do I see why it is, although, I can see why the student would have more freedom in this sort of system.
As for the quality of institutions. Let’s be clear on this, there are no universities in the world that can match the “Big 5” (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, UChicago) are far as econ goes. And even besides those, there’s not many places that can match other top US programmes such as Yale, UCLA, Berkeley, Northwestern, NYU, Columbia. I agree that prospective supervisors and research resources, but I think there’s a strong correlation between prestige of the university and the resources available to the prospective scholar. Also, if you go to a top PhD programme you’re going to be around the brightest minds possible, and that is probably one of the best experiences you can get.
This also leads me to one other reason for Austrians to choose the US, as somebody who lives in Europe I know that there’s very few places one can go to learn Austrian economics in addition to the stuff you learn at university. Whereas over in the USA you have events organised by the Mises Institute, Cato and FEE as well as some other possibilities. I’ve read some interviews of top Mises scholars who say that events are vital.
Ah, I wasn’t aware that you’d completed a PhD, what subject was it in? I can see the diffculties involved in writing a PhD dissertion from some of the ones I’ve read. The very fact that so many of them eventually become books speaks for itself. Perhaps I overstated my case, I don’t know how difficult a PhD in economics is. I do agree that it is in large part a matter of motivation, but would you not agree that it does take some aptitude?
That said, from my knowledge of PhD programmes, limited as it is, I know that Econ PhDs are compatively easy. As I can imagine it be, in comparison to a PhD in one of the “hard” sciences.
It isn’t the cost of living that need cause worry, but the tuition fees.
That depends on whether you are any good.
I haven’t checked the world rankings by subject for a good while so I’ll confess to being ignorant of that.
That depends on what we mean by resources. If you are studying the impact of the Chicago Boys policies on Chile, you would probably be best studying in Chile as opposed to travelling back and forth from a different country. But yes, more presigious universities have more money and with them better libraries.
Maybe.
They would, they want bumbs on seats at conferences. But the fact is you don’t learn a great deal from conferences that you couldn’t learn from the journals. Conferences are very good for networking, but little else besides.
I haven’t, I’m mid way through it. The point where if you quit you’ve wasted a lot of time and money to quit, but at the same time not far enough in to see light at the end of the tunnel. This probably explains why I’m such a bitter person.
PhDs rarely are in a specific subject, they tend to be highly inter-disiplinary. As a result you have economists in politics departments, politics students in geography departments, geographers in history departments, ad infinitum. However I am in a history department, and would describe myself as a historian of sorts, but I could just as well be in an interpol department.
Not really, the work isn’t hugely challenging. I would say that a student achieving an upper second could do a PhD, probably a student with a lower second too. The reason people don’t do it is because universities set the entry bar unnecessarily high, because it costs so much, because they righly realise that writing 100,000 words is a hell of a task, and because it takes such a long time.
I’ll agree with this, but with a caveat: Austrian Economics is not the programs title, or even its main focus.
GMU has an excellent graduate program in Economics (and it’s undergraduate is as well). And, while it allows you to take courses that focus on Austrian School economics, it still requires you to take the micro and macro level courses, econometrics, statistics, etc. It’s not a narrow-focused program that specializes only in Austrian economics and gives lip service or otherwise ignores economics as a whole.
GMU is known for it’s Austrian offerings, but it is also known–and possibly better so–for offering courses in other ‘schools’ of economics: public choice, public finance, and law and economics in it’s graduate program.
A PhD is inherently the ultimate act of specialisation. So you don’t get a PhD in ‘economics’, you propose yourself a specific question and then attempt to answer that question. For example you might ask what was the impact of the New Deal on a specific region, or what ever. You then try to find out.
So maybe I should get it at the Swedish university I am attending now then. It is one of the best in this region.
Yeah right … or maybe not. The problem and reason you need the Austrian is that your thesis topics and so forth need to be approved by a professor.
Putting financial economics aside it just wouldn’t be possible to get any thesis I would want to write approved here.
I could do work in environmental economics and figure out the best way to regulate CO2 emissions … or I write something about how to fight unemployment by printing more money. Why strong law enforced labour unions create a stable labour market and benefits the nation would probably work too…
Rather simplistic ofc but I hope you get the picture. This is the reason why the ‘Austrian’ is so important when choosing a PhD program.
I’m currently a freshman there about to go into my second semester. From what I can tell there really isn’t anything distinctly “Austrian” about it. DiLorenzo teaches a couple of classes there (one which I’m trying to get into but is full at the moment) and interestingly enough is teaching a Microecon 101 class next semester (I would have loved to have him teach that class, but unfortunately I took econ 101 in my first semester as Micro is a prerequisite for Macro at Loyola). Another perk about the school is that the classes are fairly small (60 kids will be the most you will ever have in a class, in my chinese class I had seven kids including me).
In terms of anything else about the school, the Republican club at the beginning of the semester was able to get Murphy to talk about the great depression in a seminar. I also think they are trying to get Ron Paul to come spring semester.
As I said before, the econ program there is good but not “Austrian”. I don’t really think that any undergraduate program really is and nor should it be something of huge concern. If you don’t want to take regular econ classes, then chances are pursuing a job in economics/PhD will be a huge drag. Neoclassical economic thought is dominant right now, so that is what will be taught. Along with alot of math. Its also good to take the regular classes because it strengthens your ability to critique theories and learn why they are wrong. I had a great deal of fun messing with my professor about cardinal utility and monopoly theory (price searchers/takers etc) during class this year.
And from what I can get, math is very important in economics. If you don’t like math (or can’t stand it at least), then economics degrees will be very hard. Since graphs are everywhere in neoclassical economics, derivatives are involved (“marginal” curves always derivatives, etc). We didn’t touch upon these in the basic econ classes, but I learned this in my calc class.
Loyola actually just started a new program this year called the Quantitative Economics Concentration. I brought my classbook home, so I’ll just type out the whole thing (not that everyone wants to see Loyola’s graduate preparation, but this is probably a good idea for anyone who wants to look at the math involvement, etc).
Quantitative Economics Concentration: This program is appropriate for those who plan to pursue master’s or doctoral work in economics and/ or teaching. This path is also appropriate for students interested in analytical careers in economics or finance. Requirements for the concentration are as follows:
EC 305 Mathematical Economics
EC 420 Econometrics
EC 405 Game Theory or
EC 425 Applied Econometric Forecasting
MA 251Calc 1
MA 252 Calc 2
MA 301 Linear Algebra (they also recommend differential equations and Calculus III)
You need to take other electives , and the whole usual bit for a regular econ degree.
I’m going to TCC for drafting & design, but I thought about taking some economics courses just to see what they are teaching (and maybe even “debate” a teacher or two). For those who are taking economics classes, does this seem…thorough? http://www.tcc.edu/academics/courses/eco.htm
Just a thought, why not go the Tom Woods way? I mean, specialize in history(or some other related subject), and self-study economics away from college. That seems attractive, especially when you see the amount of math you gotta be breaking your head over through the academic years. Those years can be used better in a self-study programme. I am sure the net result would be a positive.
If I am walking down a sidewalk and see a large wall in front of me, I do not take it down brick by brick to get where I am going. I go around it. The economics profession is a large brick wall. Getting a PhD in economics is your entrance to that profession - once inside, you’re going to have to fight every second until you get tenure to be taken seriously and not fired. Your department chair wants grants and hopes for a job in government - he knows that to get either, he needs you to stop publishing Austrian crap. Walter Block, one of the finest economists around, was turned down for tenure, I believe, 3 times. This is not because he wasn’t good enough - it’s because he’s writing outside the accepted paradigm. Furthermore, economists tend to be whores - although most of them oppose legal prostitution, oddly enough. That is, it’s all about working for the biggest pimp - the government. You can be right, you can be great, they can know you’re right - and they’ll want to silence you. Look who gets Nobel prizes.
What do I recommend? You can try to fix the economists profession, but I’d rather go around. What other departments can you go into, talk about Austrian thought, and not be recognized as a threat? History is one - don’t call yourself an Austrian, just do an Austrian analysis on economic history. (You can also go into economics and study history of economic thought, where you can usually get away with an Austrian focus - but there are very few jobs out there.) Hayek gets discussed in cognitive science departments, and you can do a lot on spontaneous order if you go into some area related to philosophy of science. You can talk about Polyani in philosophy of science, as well. Sociology can’t get enough of Weber. Straight philosophy is also a potential field where you can talk about epistemological commitments, even ethics, without being seen as a threat. Certainly, you can go into philosophy and look into methodology of science, now a hot field. I am doing a PhD in mathematical logic, with a secondary interest in chaos theory - which is where I get to look at Hayek, Mises, and all the rest. I just applied to Mises for a summer fellowship looking at Austrian correctives to chaos theory on economics. But I’m not a good person to look at, because I have no interest in a top research job, I want a teaching-heavy job, perhaps at an elite high school.
If you are going to be an economist, do not go to an “Austrian” graduate program. Go to the best graduate program that will pay you, get taken seriously, then try to destroy their paradigms. Also, learn to be friendly at lunches, which is a significant part of hiring decisions. Make sure you are pleasant to converse with. This is a major factor they look at in hiring, and accepting grad students. However, for undergrad, this is much less crucial. People from good liberal arts schools you haven’t heard of, who have strong test scores, get into elite grad schools. Plus, if you’re going to defend any aspect of Austrian thought during your grad coursework, or write something Austrian-related for your dissertation, you will need to know Austrian economics well. I don’t mean to the level of Mises U or this website, but rather, to the level of an entry-level Austrian economist, which is a much higher level. So, I’d be inclined to say consider Grove City for undergrad, if you can stand the environment there (personal choice, go visit and see), and maybe do a minor in math, or at least make sure you take the right math classes - calc through multivariable, full linear algebra sequence, stats, preferably some analysis if you can do it.
That I find very interesting. I just recently submitted a paper to the QJAE exploring Economic calculation as a perturbed autistic optimisation problem, though most of what I did was to quantify and describe the scale of the problem, as well as hint at its difficulties and features to further outline why it is impossible. A kind of economising “chaos” was one of the things I alluded to as becoming an important feature once the problem takes on a real world scale with real world assumptions. Send me a PM if you’d be interested in reading it.
Well, a year later, I decided to go to George Mason for my undergrad. I’ve changed my views significantly - not blindly Austrian anymore but still very much a libertarian. I’m studying indifference curves on my own over winter break: how un-Austrian is that?. Taking introductory microeconomics here has made me realize that the only truth in economics isn’t just found in the Austrian school. Also, the more I study here, the more ignorant I realize that I am. I feel incapable of making a judgment on neoclassical vs. Austrian vs. post-Keynesian vs. whatever, because I realize how little I yet know.
I’m going to try to place into as top a grad school as possible, so I’m double majoring in math and economics. GMU is a great school for anyone thinking about going there for economics. The professors are easy to meet during office hours or appointments, excellent teaching, and I’m fairly sure there are research opportunities if you asked. I’ll be taking intermediate micro with Walter Williams next semester - excited about that.
Most mainstream micro conclusions aren’t really contradictory to Austrian ones. It is just the way they reach them, it is inefficient and also makes economics look like it is incomprehensible and useless.There metodology is crap but still generate basically correct results.
It is macroeconomics that is the real problem not to speak of insane shit like environmental economics where you will have to learn stuff that is just plain wrong and even obviously retarded. In my macro class they emphasised Keynes alot, then to give it some perspective they brought in Marxism and a tiny bit of monetarism. Right that is such a wide spectrum of economic of thought right…maybe not.
Taking introductory microeconomics here has made me realize that the only truth in economics isn’t just found in the Austrian school. Also, the more I study here, the more ignorant I realize that I am. I feel incapable of making a judgment on neoclassical vs. Austrian vs. post-Keynesian vs. whatever, because I realize how little I yet know.