Development Economics: how to choose programs and which ones?

[cloudy_enough]

Hello everyone,

I am interested in Development Economics and am planning to apply to Economics PHD programs next fall.

How does one go about choosing programs that may be worth applying to? I talked to a Professor of mine and he basically went through several programs (in his head) and commented on them (either they are good for development economics or not much is going on, etc...) It seems like rankings are a bit unreliable since there are many programs that do well in DE rankings but which knowledgeable people do not recommend as strongly (Stanford, for instance).

I know that people suggest looking at the faculty who is involved, but what exactly does one look for? How many people should there be working on DE? For instance, Princeton is supposed to be very good for DE (my Professor also said this) but there are only 3-4 people who are specificially working on DE. Is this in general a good number? Or is this because faculty working in closely related areas (for instance, international economics) are not being counted (should they be counted)?

I guess my point is that there are some programs that are well-recommended and I have no problem applying to those. But how does one find out about more programs?

I also thought I might ask directly (here) what programs are good. Some common recommendations are (not including British programs) Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Cornell. What other programs (esp. top-30) are supposed to be good? What about Michigan or UCLA, for instance? Also, what about Agricultural/Applied Economics departments? People seem to mention Berkeley ARE often, for instance.

Thanks for your help,

CE.

PS: Just in case it has moderation consequences, I must mention that I had another account here sometime ago but I can't remember the account name or the email linked with it, so I registered a new one.

[TruDog]

Maybe I'm just a little bit of a homer here, but the Agricultural and Applied Econ program here at Wisconsin is considered to be a top-tier development program in applied economics.

Do note, however, that academic placements tend to be better from economics PhD programs than from applied economics PhD programs. If you're interested in a nonacademic development job (government or private sector), then an applied econ PhD won't be held against you.

[asquare]

You asked about Michigan -- there are several development economists here, including David Lam (current director of graduate studies, does a lot of work on South Africa, a lot of economic demography) Dean Yang (who is also a professor in the policy school, does work on migration and a lot of field experiments), Raj Arunachalam (political economy, recent PhD from Berkeley), and Rebecca Thornton (does work on health, field experiments, was a post doc and will start teaching in the fall, PhD from Harvard). Students who are studying development also often work with the labor or international economists here.

This year, Michigan's best placement was a student who studied development; she is going to Princeton. There are a lot of students, especially in the 1st and 2nd year cohorts, who are interested in development. Several people are abroad working on field research this summer, including a bunch of people who just finished their first years.

[italos]

I do not have a great reputation to UK PhD programs with the exception of LSE but Oxford University has a Masters program in Development.Probably you could have a look in their website and see if you 're interesting.

[untitled]

Look at, for instance, BREAD fellows and authors of articles for the Journal of Economic Development. These authors (and their institutions) are a good place to start.

[asa_sl]

I think NewYork university has also got some great develepment economists.

[can_econ]

If you're willing to look at Canadian programs, UBC would fit nicely on your list. UBC has four faculty working on development econ - Ashok Kotwal, Mukesh Eswaran, Siwan Anderson, and Patrick Francois. Some of the macro profs (eg Amartya Lahiri, Paul Beaudry) are interested in growth and other development-related topics in macro. I think the faculty could support a variety of interests within development economics.

[asianeconomist]

Why not check out the EconPhd.net specialty rankings ?