Importance of dissertation topic

[brohim]

I've been lurking around the forum and I am very impressed with the knowledge you guys show.

 

My question is about the dissertation topic. I look at jobs on world bank, IMF or some development banks, and they have some job titles like economist or agricultural economists. The requirement for this jobs usally call for people who have a PhD in economics or a 'related discipline' and some years of experience in the particular area in question. So what does a related discipline me?

 

Let's say I do my PhD in public policy or political science, but my dissertation focuses on an economic, development or agricultural issue. Is it possible for your career to somehow go from there to eventually getting one of those jobs?

 

The reason I ask this is that I have a professor at my school who studied and teaches political science, but her papers and research focused on development studies in Africa and Turkey joining the EU, next thing you know she's a lead 'economists' at ECB.

 

Basically, I have a double major in philosophy (bleh) and in Economics and a masters in public policy, I enjoyed doing research but I have many areas of interest. I feel that economics is the area I really enjoy but may be punching above my weight by doing a PhD in it, if that makes sense as I only have calculus 1. So I was leaning towards public policy or political science.

I did internships at a bank and worked summers as a robot, I mean writer for a database company and I knew that traditional job was not for me. Having experienced research I know I want to do that but not certain what path to take.

 

Thanks

[Humanomics]

Yeah you can look at a variety of development issues in political science and sociology as well as of course policy. If you want to get on the public health side of things sociology or these "social policy" programs offered by sociology departments probably aren't a bad bet. These won't be wildly different from policy programs, I don't think. The advice, regardless PhD program is pretty much always that you should look at the recent working papers that the department's faculty are doing, and especially the sort of stuff the recent job market candidates are doing. You can hopefully triangulate that with the different focuses of the development institutions you'd be aiming at longer run, and try and track in a specific direction. So yeah I'd look at ag econ programs, policy programs (especially these), maybe some sociology programs who do lots of medical and development sociology (I don't know yet what development sociology is, but I suspect it's scarily statist and Marxian), and maybe some poly sci. That's vague, but Google is your friend here, and I think you've generally got the right idea. Good luck.

[brohim]

Really helpful. Thanks

 

Yeah you can look at a variety of development issues in political science and sociology as well as of course policy. If you want to get on the public health side of things sociology or these "social policy" programs offered by sociology departments probably aren't a bad bet. These won't be wildly different from policy programs, I don't think. The advice, regardless PhD program is pretty much always that you should look at the recent working papers that the department's faculty are doing, and especially the sort of stuff the recent job market candidates are doing. You can hopefully triangulate that with the different focuses of the development institutions you'd be aiming at longer run, and try and track in a specific direction. So yeah I'd look at ag econ programs, policy programs (especially these), maybe some sociology programs who do lots of medical and development sociology (I don't know yet what development sociology is, but I suspect it's scarily statist and Marxian), and maybe some poly sci. That's vague, but Google is your friend here, and I think you've generally got the right idea. Good luck.

[chateauheart]

I don't think development issues are considered "proper" political science by most political scientists. I'm interested in both development and political economics, so I've spent quite some time looking for people in political science departments who do development-related research. There are very few. Besides, even if you end up doing development or broadly economics-related research in a political science program, you're still expected to use formal models or quantitative evidence. You might even need to be better at math/stats than a comparable economics student because people will be generally skeptical of your training. My advice is that you try to get a strong quantitative background if you want to do economics-related research, regardless of what path you choose to follow.

[Humanomics]

I don't think development issues are considered "proper" political science by most political scientists. I'm interested in both development and political economics, so I've spent quite some time looking for people in political science departments who do development-related research. There are surprisingly few. Even if you end up doing development or broadly economics-related research in a political science program, you're still expected to use formal models or quantitative evidence. You might even need to be better at math/stats than a comparable economics student because of your background. My advice is that you try to get some of that quantitative training, regardless of what path you choose to follow.

 

Are political scientists much more concerned with the functioning of modern (as against underdeveloped or developing) States, their interrelationships, and so forth? And what's up with the obsession with finance outside of economics? IPE people are all crazy about global financial flows, no? And there's all these sociologists wetting their pants about "financialization" as well. I would be more interested in what these people had to say if they gave standard monetary theory its due. I don't trust scholars who will not confront the other side.

[chateauheart]

In fact, I have a hard time understanding why most political scientists care about the things they care about. As far as I can tell, much research in political science is done with some a priori belief that it is inherently interesting to know about how politics (domestic or international or comparative) works, even if that has no policy implication or relevance to human welfare. It's not something I can relate well with. Economics students are accustomed to the general utilitarian or "welfarist" spirit that economists motivate their research with. Disciplines like pure mathematics and political science do not have the shared enthusiasm for making their research "useful".

[Humanomics]

Good economics students are accustomed to . . . making their research "useful".

 

ftfy.

 

I read a methodologist on this point (sort of) once. If you're a mathematician you have to believe the world is made of numbers. If you're a political scientist you have to believe the world is made of politics. If you're an economist you have to believe the world is made of markets. And so on. I think each discipline takes for granted that it's already struck the "root" or "core" of something that has far-reaching implications. And as you're pointing out that's how theorists get lost in their own armchairs.

[Walras]

As far as I can tell, much research in political science is done with some a priori belief that it is inherently interesting to know about how politics (domestic or international or comparative) works, even if that has no policy implication or relevance to human welfare.

 

I disagree. While a lot of political science research is just as useless as pure theory here are also plenty of papers written (e.g. regulation, lobbying, political advertisement, analysis of transitional government bodies, conflict studies etc.) that have plenty of useful policy points. The problem as in economics (except in IO and at places run by economists FEDs, WB, IMF) is that good policy proposals have almost no influence on what policy makers decide to do. Still, there have been some useful political science work coming out of academia--some bayesian models have been used to predict which foreign elections in regions vulnerable to corruption had a high chance of being fixed (e.g. Iñaki Sagarzazu).

Anyway, economists really don't have much moral higher ground considering for decades we had theorists filling out the field of public choice, the application of economic theory to the most esoteric of political problems. We even gave Sen the nobel prize, not for his work on droughts but for his work on public choice.

 

I think each discipline takes for granted that it's already struck the "root" or "core" of something that has far-reaching implications. And as you're pointing out that's how theorists get lost in their own armchairs.

 

So true. I was once in a low level political science class where the prof was explaining how political science is all about how to decide to distribute some scarce resource. Doesn't that sound familiar? Obviously, I agreed with him, and decided from then on that he's right--political science is a field of economics.

[Ainee101]

Obviously, I agreed with him, and decided from then on that he's right--political science is a field of economics.

 

Wait, WHAT?! :D Now that's a joke. Economist usually think it's the other way round, not that I agree with either side though.

[OneArmedEcon]

A century or so ago, we were basically one field: political economy (which included sociology). For a number of reasons (many having to do with the expansion of colleges and universities in the 20th century and the need to organize them into manageable units), the social sciences split into many fields. We're slowly seeing convergence in methodology and a lot of cross-pollination of ideas. It's not yet an optimal levels IMHO, but interdisciplinary study is becoming more and more common.

 

In my view, the optimal thing would be to move toward the Caltech model where there is just a "PhD Social Sciences." We share a common language and methodology and then apply/develop the theoretical frameworks with some awareness of what others are doing to study the same problem. We've made good progress on the methodology: political scientists and sociology programs that require strong quantitative skills are not that much less rigorous than comparably ranked econ programs. But we're still speaking different languages, or at least different dialects. Unfortunately, given the incentives facing academics, there aren't a lot of reasons to push toward consolidation. Although at some point in the not-too-distant future, budget realities may push some schools (probably lower tier public universities) toward consolidated departments and degree programs.

[Walras]

In my view, the optimal thing would be to move toward the Caltech model where there is just a "PhD Social Sciences." We share a common language and methodology and then apply/develop the theoretical frameworks with some awareness of what others are doing to study the same problem. We've made good progress on the methodology: political scientists and sociology programs that require strong quantitative skills are not that much less rigorous than comparably ranked econ programs.

 

I'm not sure this is optimal. I mean as it is our degree name is not informative at all to the general public about what your actual specialty in knowledge is because usually you know a ton about a small part of economics. Now consider how many economists have been touting different prescriptions during the crisis. This contributed to our profession becoming somewhat irrelevant in the eyes of politicians and the public because we couldn't present united front. This would be a lot worse if we had everyone labeled PhD in Social Sciences, and people without strong backgrounds in macro, but a lot of visibility (like maybe a column in a popular syndicated newspaper--sorry I just couldn't resist the temptation), chiming in. Then again, if it encourages programs into cutting the number of PhDs they graduate it could very well be optimal as you suggest.

 

Although at some point in the not-too-distant future, budget realities may push some schools (probably lower tier public universities) toward consolidated departments and degree programs.

 

I agree, especially since there will also be a declining college age population. Fortunately, the social sciences are pretty safe considering they're pretty popular and there are a lot of other ridiculous degrees administrators will be busy fighting to eliminate. I expect Universities will try to get rid of other degrees (e.g. theatre, Apparel design, ethnic studies, gender/women's studies, sports/recreation/tourism management etc.) and they will fold the faculty into any existing larger departments with even the slightest overlap. Of course, the social sciences are going to be pretty good candidates for overlapping with some of the more esoteric ones.

[Humanomics]

The problem as in economics (except in IO and at places run by economists FEDs, WB, IMF) is that good policy proposals have almost no influence on what policy makers decide to do.

I'm *really* skeptical of social engineering, and well intentioned and smart as policy-prescribers are, I think that's what they're doing. Now there's a conflict for me there. Because - duh - I'd like to figure out what's best for the world and change it as much as anyone else who wants to become a prancing intellectual. So my compromise I guess is that we have the opportunity to influence people's ideas in the street, and through voluntary and deliberative discourse these people can chew my ideas and decide what's best for them. Influencing public opinion is different than trying to influence public policy, and hopefully as much if not more effective (because you're damn right -- these politicians don't give a crap what economists say about anything other than electric utilities, bandwidth auctions, and fiscal and monetary policy).

Anyway, economists really don't have much moral higher ground considering for decades we had theorists filling out the field of public choice, the application of economic theory to the most esoteric of political problems. We even gave Sen the nobel prize, not for his work on droughts but for his work on public choice.

You really think public choice is esoteric? Every public choice argument I've ever heard has been quite practical. Political lobbying replicates pretty nicely the "auction for a dollar" experiment, where people will pay way more for a dollar because of sunk costs -- companies literally spend more on a piece of legislation than it stands to save them. I mean, if you add in the degree to which this reduces voter welfare, nothing could be more inefficient from an economic, ethical, social justice, or whateverthehell other perspective you can imagine. But I haven't read a lot of proper papers in public choice. And didn't Sen get the Nobel for his welfare economics? That's different than Virginia Public Choice via Tullock and Buchanan. I don't understand the math in it, but Sen's "Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal" is a really cool idea.

[Humanomics]

(e.g. theatre, Apparel design, ethnic studies, gender/women's studies, sports/recreation/tourism management etc.

 

There are more people screaming to support diversity studies and vocational training than traditional degrees. I would think these will be the last to go.

[Walras]

On second thought tourism management might be justified in staying even though in business schools at my school the stats said it underperformed the other business majors in terms of unemployment, and pay. The business colleges also probably don't have to worry about making cuts. However, the others are unquestionably not what people are talking about when they say they want vocational studies (basically I think they want accountants, engineers, computer scientists, teachers, etc.), and I'm not at all concerned with the people pushing for diversity because right now they have very little pull compared to the politicians who can slash their public funds and have been successful at a number of schools of forcing differential tuition to emphasize what they think students ought to major in. In other words, they'd increase the tuition costs of those majors and decrease the tuition for engineers, computer science and business majors.

 

Also from what I understand diversity studies majors was a way to compete with other colleges by saying we offer majors in everything you could want. Obviously there's going to be less competition like that as public funds are slashed, and we approach the ceiling of what colleges can get people to pay for/get the government to provide loans for.

[chateauheart]

 

You really think public choice is esoteric? Every public choice argument I've ever heard has been quite practical. Political lobbying replicates pretty nicely the "auction for a dollar" experiment, where people will pay way more for a dollar because of sunk costs -- companies literally spend more on a piece of legislation than it stands to save them. I mean, if you add in the degree to which this reduces voter welfare, nothing could be more inefficient from an economic, ethical, social justice, or whateverthehell other perspective you can imagine. But I haven't read a lot of proper papers in public choice. And didn't Sen get the Nobel for his welfare economics? That's different than Virginia Public Choice via Tullock and Buchanan. I don't understand the math in it, but Sen's "Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal" is a really cool idea.

 

He meant social choice.

 

Remember, my comrades: public choice good, social choice bad. Public choice good, social choice bad...

[Humanomics]

He meant social choice.

 

Remember, my comrades: public choice good, social choice bad. Public choice good, social choice bad...

 

wtf is a social choice?

 

"Social choice" is up there with "wage slavery."

 

And remember -- this is coming from someone who firmly believes in group level interactions. I just don't believe in stupid nomenclature.

[Walras]

Thanks chateauheart for correcting that. I didn't even notice I'd misremembered the name. Kind of crazy that I mistakenly wrote social choice as public choice (never heard of that stuff) and there actually was a body of literature on public choice. Also, Humanomics, about not knowing what social choice theory, well you didn't miss much. It's a bunch of papers about how people's rankings/preferences) can be used or mostly not used to make decisions as a group. The best of the lot is probably Arrow's impossibility theorem, which sort of got the area going, but even that isn't of any practical use. In fact, this area of theory is pretty much dead as there was a decision made by theorists from top journals to stop accepting papers on this topic because there were only epsilon refinements being made. By the way, hearing about this partially restored my faith in theory since top theorists are apparently policing their field to try to keep it from following too many dead ends.

[Integral]

I love social choice theory, but yeah: it's full of negative results (which are useful, but you need positive results sometimes too...), it's kind of a dead end research-wise, and all of the useful stuff has been incorporated into political game theory across the hall.

[chateauheart]

In fact, this area of theory is pretty much dead as there was a decision made by theorists from top journals to stop accepting papers on this topic because there were only epsilon refinements being made. By the way, hearing about this partially restored my faith in theory since top theorists are apparently policing their field to try to keep it from following too many dead ends.

 

Thus began the No Fap movement.

 

For Humanomics: I think social choice theory can best be described as the analysis of politics through abstracting from politics.

[Humanomics]

I think voting theory is useful for philosophical questions about States and such. Again this is the way it was presented to me by Alex Tabarok. When you take even a cursory glance at preference aggregation, you're forced to conclude that phrases like "will of the people," are either senseless or need some particular defining.

 

Also important here, probably, is the classical problem between separating "private" and "public" domains of rights and duties in political theory, as preference theorems might show where the boundaries of those interact.

 

I really do think these philosophical conversations are important, because the trickle down is the memes people carrying around with them, like, "I have a raaght to muh freedum of speech, and errbody got thur 'pinion too, an'ats fine." Those memes have an incredible influence on behavior and political outcomes.

[Walras]

Thus began the No Fap movement.

 

Naw, fapping is still popular. It was just an attempt to stop the circle jerking.