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发信人: afeinac (我爱豆豉), 信区: abroadstudy
标 题: [zz]Advice to under DDMM in Econ
发信站: BBS 天地人大站 (Mon Oct 25 10:29:52 2004), 站内
发信人: monicsun (monic), 信区: AdvancedEdu
标 题: Advice to under DDMM in Econ
发信站: 北大未名站 (2004年02月12日12:59:03 星期四) , 站内信件
The motivation of this small article is to help my Beida undergraduate friends
who really love economics.
This is my fifth week of second semester in the PhD program in economics here
at the US.The biggest gain I have had during the past half year is that my view
toward economics is "washed" into the mainstream. I am not saying that we were
not learning economics in Beida but I do think there is some ideological gap
between the new me and the senior me in Beida. (Sure there are even more gaps
ahead :) I am just trying to help so don't come to me furiously saying that you
think Beida's education has its own values; it sure does.
First, economics is rigorous. (I don't know whether economics is a science or
not, and honestly, I don't want to talk about it) Many people agree that math
is a very rigorous subject, I can tell you now with lots of confidence that
economics can be as rigorous. There is a variety of undergraduate economics
courses which we can select in Beida from which we learned many conclusions.
Listen up, every conclusion has a strong math proof behind it (unless the
conclusion is wrong, which sometimes does happen). It is not that economics is
kind of arts in the sense of ambiguity, it is just that many of us don't know
the subject's background. It is very hard to get every detail, I admit. To be
well prepared for a good PhD program in economics, I suggest you gain the
analysis skills when you are an under.You can either go to the math department
and take Math Analysis (Shu4fen1) with their freshman or read Walter RUdin's
"Principles of Mathematiacl Analysis" and do all the problems in it. I suggest
you follow the first choice, because the second is hard and you don't know
whether your answers are right or not. Actually, most of the time they are
wrong. If you are really smart and have already done that, let's see what's
next...
Second, I was completely lost when I faced the choice of fields on filling out
the grad school applications.I randomly picked out two fields as my fields of
interest and I believe most of the kids are still doing it today. Even now, I
still don't know what to do in the next ten years but let me give you a flavor
of the basic concepts of some specific fields. (Note: this part can be very
biased and please always be a cautious reader:) I will look at them from a
mathematical point of view which is not smart at all but at least tells you
what you should know to do any of them.
Microeconomics (insiders call it Theory), to me, is built up by Arrow and
Debreu on topology and calculus a few decades ago. This is very hard core and
requires tons of math insights.Game theory, industrial organization, labor
economics and international finance are possible fields stemming from micro and
I myself don't know much about them yet (Sure I've done all the undergrad
courses in them, but after you get familiar with the PhD stuff, you almost
think you had known nothing about economics..) But one thing is sure, to do
micro, reciting is not enough. Even you know all the proofs on Mas-Collel,
Whinston and Green, it's just not enough. It requires lots of creativity, from
both small things in life (like bids on Ebay) and small things in math (be
prepared to prove lots of lemma as the first person).
Macroeconomics has to do with dynamic optimization and differential equations
(sure there is linera algebra).My personal opinion is that macro is a "social"
field, meaning that macroeconomists know people and are social. They can often
tell you ten names in five seconds and know what each of them has done. So I
guess you need to read a bunch of stuff before you get into that circle. I know
that in our undergrad class, all the models in development economics seems
outdated and non-applicable, but trust me as you
learn more, macroeconomics does make some sense out of the society.
Finance is lots of partial differential equations and stochastic processes. I'
ve done little of it (too hard!)but seems it's pretty hot on the junior faculty
job market these days. (A quick note: if you really want to stay in academia,
don't bother trying being an analyst.I was an Ibanking analyst, and it was a
pure waste of time excepted that I made one really good friend. Not all
positions in the finance industry are non-intellectual though, I know that a
first year Stanford finance PhD is doing consulting at around 400$/day)
Last, if you think this way of thinking of economics is interesting, you can
find more differences between our domestic economics education and the one of
US from articles by Yingyi Qian and it will be great if you can go down to
Wuhan univeristy's Center of Advanced Studies to listen to some stellar foreign
professors talking about various subjects. I myself fell in love with Incentive
Theories when I went there listening to David Martimort last summer. If you are
REALLY good, go ahead and read Schumpeter's "history of economic analysis", you
find almost everything you want to know about how economics
developed over the years.
If you are already here, thank you for your patience and please, if you don't
get a good offer this year or the next,don't be discouraged. Although the
admission committee members are smart, they don't really think too much about
the recruiting process. Plus there are always this genious' girlfriend or that
smart cookie's boyfriend, transfering students and maste students applying and
you know that two persons' effort is always greater than one's. After all,
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