books to review before grad school

[Cassin]

Would it be all right if I don't do any of this and just chill out before I join any place? I mean why prepone the 5-yr long period of torture!!

If you have a descent background already - take a break, you don't really have to bring a backpack of books to the beach. Personally, I am going to study a little but I wouldn't even call it "part-time" :-).

[ephyou]

I think Peter Kennedy's "A Guide to Econometrics" has the best intuition on a variety of basic to advanced topics. Things actually make sense now! It should be used as a supplement for graduate metrics.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/026261183X/

Why do you think it has 5/5 stars? It's very lucid. Read readers' reviews and prepare to be blown away :-).

blech! kennedy is sucha terrible read in my opinion! you might as well just get wooldridge's textbook

[asquare]

This same discussion came up last year. Since my feelings haven't changed since then, I'm just re-posting my old message:

A friendly word of advice -- whatever you do, don't arrive at school burned out. If it's been a while since you were in school, or if you haven't taken linear algebra and real analysis, you may find it worthwhile to work through some math excercises. (Simon and Blume is a great review, and many of you will use it in math camp as well.) Similarly, if you've taken a lot of math but very little econ, it may be useful to take a peak at an intermediate undergrad micro textbook. (I'd recommend Varian's undergraduate text, or, if you're a little more comfortable with the material, his excellent graduate text, simply called Microeconomics.)

However, don't spend all summer studying! Don't read Mas Collel. Don't bother with macro at all. Let your professors guide your approach to this material when you start graduate school, and give yourself a chance to come at the material rested and enthusiastic. It's very easy to get bogged down in the details if you try to learn MWG in advance. For that book especially, it's much more productive to treat it as a reference than a primary source. Try to get the intuition from your professors, classmates, Varian, or Kreps (another good grad level text). But don't beat yourself over the head with MWG over the summer. You won't be behind if you haven't already read the book, and you won't be much ahead if you do.

What should you do to jump start your grad school experience? Start looking for interesting questions. Train yourself to look for research topics in every day life. Save newspaper or magazine articles that make you say "huh" or "that can't be true" -- they may end up generating research ideas in the future. Keep an eye out for great natural experiments, policy changes, instruments. When you have ideas, write them down. However silly they are, such a list is a place to start when, suddenly, you're told to "do research." Remember that economics is a fantastic tool for analyzing all sorts of behaviors. Pay attention to, and be interested in, the world around you.

If you want to do something a bit more rigerous, then I'd suggest getting someone (an old professor or current grad students who are a bit further along in their programs) to suggest a half-dozen seminal papers in the fields you think you are interested in. Read these papers. You'll read them again when you take field classes, and another time when you start your research, but reading them now will give you a better sense of where you are going, why all of the first year theory matters, and what research questions interest you. It will give you a little bit more background when you go to seminars and talk to other students about your research. And re-reading the papers halfway through the year is a great way to see how far you've come in building your foundation as an economist. Engaging with the literature in your intended fields is, IMO, much more useful than slaving over MWG. There will be plenty of time for that

[Cassin]

blech! kennedy is sucha terrible read in my opinion! you might as well just get wooldridge's textbook

I happen to have both (and some others) but on modelling and ideas behind things like maximum likelihood, I found Kennedy to be more insightful.

[Cassin]

However, don't spend all summer studying! Don't read Mas Collel. Don't bother with macro at all.

I agree. I got weird looks when I was reading MWG "for fun" on the airplane for eight hours. The man beside me said (quoting), "What the heck is this boring crap for?" As luck might have it, a guy in front of me was a second year Econ PhD student at some European university...

I think the book is pretty boring if it's read from cover to cover but it's very interesting when certain research idea is already formed (e.g. when should firms optimally maximize something other than profit? when can you aggregate preferences?). I think this is what people mean by using it as a bible/reference.

Here's another book (foundations of general equilibrium):
Debreu's classic Theory of Value: An Axiomatic Analysis of Economic Equilibrium
http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Value-E.../dp/0300015593

It has the highest Value per page . I think if someone can master that, they'll be in good shape in both micro and macro.

[Prometheus_Econ]

I agree with you Asquare that reading some seminal papers might be a good idea. I'm not planning on reading MWG. I just took first year graduate micro, so some of the material is familiar to me. I mainly want to brush up my math a bit, and read through Dudley for the rigor and Ok for the economic applications. That's all. I think it'll help greatly later on, and I don't have the time to go over it that much during my first year. I am also not planning on spending my entire time on it. I'll relax plenty of time. It's more like "fun" reading for me. That might sounds weird, but I do enjoy reading formal mathematics and working on some problems.

[dafrk3in]

I think Theory of Value is a good intro to rigorous economic theory.

Chapters 1,2,3, and 5 of MWG are also a good intro to 1st year micro, and they aren't very hard.

Sundaram's Intro to Optimization Theory is a good math reference for the first year.

[quantwanabe]

I will share my experience.....

I took Micro I and Macro II last semester. It was very challenging for me because those were my first ever courses in economics. I never took econ courses as an undergrad(I was a math and cs major and now doing MS in applied math). At least from my experience, I will say that the amount of mathematics one needs is way overblown I mean guys its not that bad relax enjoy your sunny summer!!!! if you know calculus and linear algebra very well and if you have the ability to grasp new concepts quick then you should not have any trouble. In macro, most of you will certainly cover dynamic programming its not hard you will set up optimization over and over again. What I found challenging was the intuition which I didn't have at first maybe due to a lack of undergrad background who knows???? After you solve your optimization problem, you will come up with equations which you must interpret using words not math....so my advice is not be paranoid about math and try to build your economic intuition instead, you can do so by reading papers in your area of interest and thus learning along the way how economists interpret their equations using words and not math jargons...just my 2 cents..

[KingOfConvenience]

books are overrated.

that is by far the dumbest thing i've read in a while.

[Corneconomics]

I've been using Marty Weitzman's "Income, Wealth, and the Maximum Principle" for an optimal control class, and its been great for the intuition behind a lot of the optimization stuff from macro last semester. I'd recommend it as highly readable, and it isn't a bear to carry around. Otherwise, I'd agree with asquare about seminal papers. One thing that is surprising, however, is how well-read and literate graduate students can be. There are as many times when you feel out of place in a conversation because you haven't read Durkheim and Benidict Anderson or Lahiri and Toole, as Romer and Royden. So I wish I had gotten a taste of other social sciences, and I'm happy I read fiction (although not John Kennedy Toole, yet) last summer.