Good European Schools?

[mbonheur]

Originally Posted by LouisBD

Not to forget that he's 50% MIT.
Not only they have Dewatripont, but also Philippe Weil who is also quite well known. And they have produced some great researchers in the past (in different fields). We are just not always aware from where some people come.

E.g.: I was surprised to find out that this researcher obtained his phd at the ULB: http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~groland/pubs/CVGR2007.pdf

Sure, they are quite a few people over there. Becht comes to my mind as well. I seriously do think that Belgian schools are somewhat underrated here while Spanish schools are quite overrated.

@surprises (off-topic): I was surprised when I found out that Sala-i-martin got his Phd in philosophy. Maybe that explains why he has some common sense in his popular science stuff (not like Mankiw e.g)

[PrinzPoldi]

Maybe I can add something to the German Scene:
For american-style programs, there are apart from Munich, Bonn and Mannheim which have been mentioned, also Cologne (starting this year), the Ruhr Graduate School of Economics (RWI Essen), Frankfurt, Bielefeld and two in Berlin (one from the DIW). I just went through the application process for quite a few of them, so if you have any specific questions, go ahead.

[LouisBD]

Originally Posted by mbonheur

Sure, they are quite a few people over there. Becht comes to my mind as well. I seriously do think that Belgian schools are somewhat underrated here while Spanish schools are quite overrated.

@surprises (off-topic): I was surprised when I found out that Sala-i-martin got his Phd in philosophy. Maybe that explains why he has some common sense in his popular science stuff (not like Mankiw e.g)

Are you sure?
Xavier Sala-i-Martin's Vita
Isn't he just saying that he has a Phd?
Doctor of Philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[jeeves0923]

I agree with LouisBD

[mbonheur]

Originally Posted by LouisBD

Are you sure?
Xavier Sala-i-Martin's Vita
Isn't he just saying that he has a Phd?
Doctor of Philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You are right. I kinda relied on what some buddy told me, but Sala-I-Martin's vita clearly says that he obtained a Phd in Economics. What a disappointment, I really thought you could get acceptance in economics with a Phd from an other field.

[rvalchev]

Thanks a lot for the lively discussion guys. I've gotten some great pieces of information and all the details posted so far indeed greatly exceed what my initial expectations were

Thanks again, I've added those schools on my "think list" and I'll start sorting through them soon. But in no way did I mean this post to be putting any sort of a break on the European schools discussion that has been forming in here , please plug away

P.S. On the issue of Oxford and Cambridge, I think enlaplaya raises a good point where great researchers might not be good teachers. Does anybody have an idea how you can guard against that? I would assume if a professor includes the students whose dissertation committees he has chaired on his Vita then to him teaching is important?

[LouisBD]

It might be an indicator but I would not rely on it to much. I have some anecdotal evidence that points in another direction.

Besides, I do not believe in schools without any good teacher or schools were good teachers are abundant. Economics teaches us otherwise. Of course some schools foster a climate which helps professors being good teachers.

Sometimes I feel that students look mainly to the name, as if pursuing a phd with a renowed name increases the quality of your research. I believe that a young, less established promoter, can be a true mentor just as well.


(a bit off-topic, sorry, I needed to get this nonsense out)

[EnLaPlaya]

Originally Posted by rvalchev

P.S. On the issue of Oxford and Cambridge, I think enlaplaya raises a good point where great researchers might not be good teachers. Does anybody have an idea how you can guard against that?

Well, to make myself a bit more clear, in the specific case of these schools I´d be a bit worried about the overall structure and performance of their econ programmes, but it was not to mean that the profs they have can´t teach well. I just think that places like Tinbergen, EUI or maybe Bocconi strictly dominate over these, whatever the rankings say (for Tinbergen case, they would agree).

Perhaps, one way to indicatively assess the quality of teaching from a distance is to look at the lecture notes/problem sets/past exams (if published somewhere on the net); this could give a fairly good clue as to what one can expect.

[vanRijn]

mmm I also wanted to add something about Bocconi.

They have some amazing faculty for sure, and they are extremely good at placing their top students into really really good schools in the US: arguably, bocconi has one of the best placement records in europe for econ phd.

However, I really dont know how much they do invest in their PhD program, and whether they are able to attract the star students they seem to attract for undergrad.

regarding oxbridge's "bad teaching", i might be wrong but i think that it's kind of "the english way of teching graduate stuff" + some noise due to different teaching abilities of different people. and again, if one is interested in private sector placement, ruling out oxbridge would be a huge mistake.