Economics, Ph.D.

Program Overview

This PhD program in Economics offers concentrations in various fields, including econometrics, industrial organization, and public economics. Students complete coursework in their chosen field and participate in seminars and research projects. The program prepares graduates for careers in academia, government, and the private sector.

Program Outline

Outline:

• Fields of Concentration:
Econometrics, industrial organization, international economics, labor economics, macroeconomics, microeconomic theory, and public economics.
• Curriculum:
• First year: Economic theory and statistics courses, plus seminars for first-year doctoral students featuring faculty presentations.
• Second year: Students choose a field of concentration and take advanced courses in that field.
• Course Schedule:
• Econometrics:
• Economic Statistics and Econometrics I
• Economic Statistics and Econometrics II
• Econometric Methods
• Econometric Methods
• Topics in Applied Econometrics
• Economic Statistics and Econometrics III
• Industrial Organization:
• Overview of the field
• Details of how to estimate industrial organization models
• Recent developments in the field
• International Economics:
• Core of the real side of international economics
• Macroeconomics side of international economics
• Advanced topics and treatments in international economics
• Labor Economics:
• Labor Economics
• Survey of Institutional Aspects of Labor Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics:
• Macroeconomic theory
• Empirical methods in macroeconomics
• Theory and econometrics of environments comprised of interacting agents
• Monetary and financial theory
• Methods of modeling and coping with uncertainty, imperfect information, and private information
• Computational or econometric methods
• Topics in macroeconomics
• Microeconomic Theory:
• Partial and general equilibrium theory
• Game theory
• Economics of incentives and information
• Decision theory
• Public Economics:
• Theory of Public Finance and Fiscal Policy
• Applied econometrics or field topics course
• Individual Modules:
• Doctoral Minor or Graduate/Professional Certificate:
All doctoral students are required to complete a doctoral minor or Graduate/Professional certificate. Students completing an Option B (Distributed) minor are recommended to complete four courses from inside and outside the Economics department.

Assessment:

• Micro and macro theory preliminary examinations:
Must be taken in early summer following the first year of graduate study.
• Econometrics courses:
Students must earn a B average in the first-year econometrics courses; retaking the applicable course(s) during the second year if the two-course GPA average is less than 3.0.

Careers:

• Academia:
Assistant professors at University of California–San Diego, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Oregon, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Rochester, Ohio State University, University of Florida, and University of California–Santa Cruz.
• Non-US Universities:
University College London, London School of Economics, McMaster University, National Taiwan University, University of Mannheim, University of Warwick, National University of Singapore, Peking University, and Tsinghua University.
• Non-Academic Employment:
Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the International Monetary Fund, US Treasury Department, RAND Corporation, the Korea Development Institute, NERA Economics Consulting, Amazon, and Mathematica Policy Research Institute.