Quality of Research Vs Rank

[DismalScientist]

Hi guys,

If the ultimate goal of a graduate education in economics is to produce outstanding research, shouldn't employers put a lot of weight on Dissertations and job market papers in stead of the department a PhD is from? In many discussions so far, I've gotten the impression that employers prefer PhDs from higher ranked departments to those from lower ranked universities even if the quality of research (dissertaion) of the latter is better. What do you guys think?

~DismalScientist

[associate]

I just want to qualify my response on this one. I think if you asked employers who seek PhDs whether research or institution quality was more important, they would say research. In fact, I would say that is what the candidates who get considered get judged on. But in practice, they don't have enough time to read every PhD's research dissertation, so many things, such as dept or acquaintances, or major are used to filter people down, and in those cases, I'd say ranking are more important because they are quantitative, vs. research, which tends to be qualitative. So I'm going to go ahead and respond research, because I think these employers (again, we're talking about the ones who seek PhDs) would say you could get a job at their orgs with good research from an okay dept, but not always vice versa.

[asianecon]

i think what matters the most in the end, is your references...however, in order to attract good referees, you must be able to do excellent research that would be noticed by big ppl in your dept...secondly, having well-connected ppl in the dept is highly correlated with the rank of the school...

what's my point? these three elements are interconnected