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Strength of UCL vs Cambridge for empirical IO


MicroMacro

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Don't know much about IO, but I imagine UCL is better than anywhere for anything empirical.

 

UCL would arguably be the best place in the world to do microeconometrics, so yes, they probably are very strong for empirical micro, and, by extension, empirical IO.

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I don't know much about Cambridge's strength in empirical IO but I believe UCL strictly dominates Cambridge in almost every area except for things related to monetary marco which is practically non-existence in UCL.

But if you check it out, UCL doesn't have any senior people specifically doing empirical IO.... I think even for the junior ones, there are only Lars Neshim and Adam Rosen and both are not well-published (yet), and Adam Rosen is more of a theoretical econometrican than an empirical IO-ist. Nevertheless, there are really top econometricans in UCL who are good enough to do applied work in any area as long as it is to do with cross-sectional data so in this sense, UCL still not that bad. (There are rumours that UCL has plans to bring a couple of empirical IO people but I don't want to be held responsible for this information.)

 

I don't know about the upward trajectory of Cambridge but my view is that the gap between UCL and Cambridge as a dept is not quite possible to be bridged within the next 5 years. In fact, I will put Warwick in front of Cambridge if I'm choosing a dept as a whole. I will personally choose UCL among the 3 choices if I were you.

 

Probably just one last note... the location of the 3 schools might be a factor as well since the 3 places give almost the greatest constrast you can ever get. Without a better choice of word, Warwick is located in a "****-hole" in Conventry, Cambridge is an amazing town especially for students, and London is, well, London.

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Probably just one last note... the location of the 3 schools might be a factor as well since the 3 places give almost the greatest constrast you can ever get. Without a better choice of word, Warwick is located in a "****-hole" in Conventry, Cambridge is an amazing town especially for students, and London is, well, London.
I couldn't have said it better myself - as a Londoner even the thought of visiting Coventry for a day sends shivers down my spine. Cambridge at least has a quaint charm ;)

 

I'll confess that the Cambridge brand name distortion field is having more than an insignificant effect but more interestingly I'm really trying to square the circle on IDEAs field rankings. For a strictly dominated department, world field rankings between top 3 and top 10 in my areas of interest (IND, CMP, MIC, ECM, COM, REG) seem somewhat out of place (see Field Rankings at IDEAS: Industrial Organization for example). Are these rankings really just a broken wheel-of-fortune or could there be more going on at Cambridge that I thought??

 

Anyway thanks all for the additional insights!

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Hey MicroMacro,

 

Cambridge is certainly hiring new people on the rise and it seems it will get better in the future. Their strengths, I think, are in theoretical econometrics (Pesaran, Harvey, Smith) and some areas of theoretical micro (Goyal, Sabourian, Harris). They are getting better also in Macro, now that they have Corsetti.

Empirical micro, on the other hand, is comparatively weak, so there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that UCL is a better place than Cambridge for empirical micro.

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He is: Vacancies, appointments, etc. - Cambridge University Reporter 6221

 

By the way, MicroMacro, are you talking about PhD or MSc?

 

Boo. I was hoping the rumors weren't true. Oh well.

 

It's likely that MicroMacro is asking about the MSc -- these two places typically don't admit people directly into their PhD programs (cf. eds's Oxford admission result).

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By the way, MicroMacro, are you talking about PhD or MSc?
Regarding my general query of relative department strength and faculty focus, neither.

 

As suspected, my acceptances are to the masters programmes at the respective schools however I'm intending to stay on (at the same) and hence dept expertise remains an important factor in my current decision, especially given the inherent nature and similarity of the masters courses themselves (and obviously there is a whole can of worms relating to "staying-on" i.e. at Cambridge this is but a formality subject to grades whereas at UCL one must make a full application to the MRes but that's a substantially less pressing concern from my point of view).

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