Language Requirement : Math PhD vs. Econ

[pookie bear]

Can anyone explain why Math PhD's have a language requirement and Econ PhD's don't? Have most of the substantial contributions to Econ been written in English?

[zshfryoh1]

I assume you are referring to how many math PhD's require some fluency in French, German or Russian. I asked a couple of my math profs about this and they told me that nowadays it mostly because of tradition, but it started years ago when most of the major mathematical work was being done in the three countries and languages mentioned above and in order for students to read the relevant scholarly works, fluency in those languages was a necessity. Econ was relatively small until the late 1800's and even until the 1950's it was not so large, and as a scholarly field it has always been heavily influenced, if not dominated by the english speaking world.