jahizbarlas

victor's staying put, he isnt going anywhere.

Ill actually give an answer to this since I dont think anyone has. I actually got a dog last july, and i started the first yr in sept. to make things more interesting, i actually got a 2 month puppy (havent regreted it ever). the first month i had nick, i was back at my brother's place to spent time with him before going to grad school and the house training for pretty taxing on my brother's carpet. i had to rent a professional carpet cleaning before i left to make things right the cost to owning a dog is not that much, or atleast its enought for me to bear easily given what i get paid which aint much at all. id say i buy a 40 lb food bag and its like 32 bucks. i buy really great food, so this is very close to the upper bound. if you get crappier food, you can go as low as 17 but i wouldnt suggest that as then your dog will live much less and be more prone to developing medical problems early. now i have a small bog, hes 25-30 pounds so he doesnt eat too much, so the bag lasts a couple of months, in winters more because the excercise is less since i dont like being out in -30F in minnesota. there are more costs like toys (which usually are destroyed in a couple of days no matter how expensive they are) and treats which might run an average of 10 bucks a month. to minimize damage to your property, get your dog toys so that he can chew them. to minimize cost, go to a dollar store and get them. even walmart doesnt sell anything below 2.5 that is half decent. my dog never barks, so i have never had problems with that. also, hes extremely social so ive never had to worry about him being aggresive towards people. with time, hes learned to listen and things get better after they get worse. i have lost a few things on the way to be quite honest, things that things i made as hobbies after months of work. but then again, its just a few stupid things so i got over them in a few hours. you should be stern with your dog, but never physically abusive. i usually tap him on the head and its enough to let him know im not happy and he lowers his head in shame (literally). being abusive never helps. as far as time, this is something that might be a little difficult to handle. i have a roomate who helps out which helps but i do find myself going back home around 5-6pm to take out my dog and walk him and stuff. sometimes it can take away time from studying which sucks. but then i probably waste time doing uesless things like typing on internet forums so i cant really blame him for that one. im finding that getting apartments can be very difficult with dogs. do consider this because its be stupid of you to get a dog and then give him up to a shelter for a cheaper apartment. IN THE END, for me, its been an amazing experience. this is my first pet, and its very rewarding and ive never regretted the decision. it provides a really nice way to relieve tension and just kind of hang out with your dog. it doesnt really matter if you have friends or a gf (both of which i do have), with a dog is different and fun in its own way. anyway, feel free to ask me any specific questions you might have as this is all i could think of at 3am in the morning. now back to micro....sigh

if you have an idea of how minnesota is like with its economics, i think the guess would be probably not... but then, who knows! files go to individual professors who recommend students based on their own individual basis of admission.

AGREED!!! A grad secretary's job is not easy but she is so helpful, not just with academic issues but also helped a lot in moving, finding apartments and all that stuff

god, thats so true. its everyday reading just before going to bed, just like the christians read the bible. we did all of deterministic dynamic optimization theory and all the proofs on a saturday. the stochastics stuff of dynamic optimization which is chaps 7-14 or something in SLP were done in a couple of lectures by pastor chari. northwestern and minnesota are prob the most rigorous. upenn is rigorous, but not as much as the former two i think. plus, upenn is changing things with their macro sequence which, if i heard correctly, i dont like at all..

huh? this is an interesting thread. ive never heard of anything like this ever, even false things like this. please continue...

although i do not know of specific things in other countries, one thing i should say is that in the us, the department chairman switches after every few years (usually 4) and all full profs are eligible to become chairs. most profs do not actually want to become chair because its a lot of administrative work and actually leaves no time for research. sometimes dept chairs are actually people who want to do less research and do more admin work. so being chair actually isnt that awesome or prestigious of a thing, unlike in the business arena where chairs are the top people in control of everything. i RAed for the dept chair and had him as my adviser(i went to a huge public U). i do not think him being chair helped me at all in my letters. hes pretty famous and so his letter would have had weight even without him being chair. so in short, my answer is that your letter would, in my opinion, have no more weight coming from a dept chair. actually if you can get a letter from the best economist in your field at your univ, that would help you the most. all economists know that being chair doesnt really mean anything....

minnesota just needs a copy of your score report to evaluate you. if you get admitted they ask for your official score to be sent to get through the formalities of admission. the grad coordinator, kara, is awesome. if you fax the score report, just tell her youre faxing it and she'll get a hold of it.

hahahaha that was actually pretty awesome!

for growth, undoubtedly acemoglu's book will become a quick hit. i dont know why people do not like sargent's book. i think its great. i wouldnt compare it to SLP since SLP is a book that has all the foundations you will need in yrs to come if you want to do advanced macro theory (stuff that requires measure theory, etc). but sargent's book is great for the variety of topics it covers and the applications it presents moving away from pure theory. i think its readable and very instructive. i wish more professors would follow it closely because it contains all the material a macro student needs to push himself into research in the field. i actually dont like romer's book. its good for building intuition for a student but does not convey the tools needed for macro.

go to acemoglu's website and get his book. although it only covers growth related things, its much much more superior to barro-sala-i-martin, and is much more readable compared to SLP. sargent's recursive is great and will be a standard for years to come because of the wide variety of topics they cover. edit: SLP is and will be for years to come 'The Bible'

i do not know what you mean. if you are still studying, for any job related to you major, you can get a permission that allows you to work for a certain time period (like a few months). now if you have gotten your degree, from the time of recieving your degree, you are given a year to find a job and find an institution/company that would sponsor a visa for your extended stay. this is the first step in the path to naturalization. hope this helps...

if you have a valid I-20 and have been taking classes (thus are in status), then you are a legal alien. You do not need your F-1 to be valid, it can even expire. As long as you are continuing student, and have a valid I-20, you should be good. I am sure you are in status and thus a legal alien, or you would be in hiding :) Good luck with applying...

no, i worked a summer at a fed as an intern. you have to be a legal alien though... I think this applies to all the Feds except the NY fed. they require US citizens/Perm Res for everything. (after typing the bit about the NY fed, i noticed you had already mentioned that. so i guess the answer to one of your questions is no again, the feds do not have a consistent policy towards this)

im sure you know this, but ill still say it. it wasnt the fact that minnesota wasnt able to get econometricians. it was more so that there was a former faculty member who didnt let them stay and thus slowly and gradually the econometricians stopped wanting to come. but now we hired a few young guys and things will prob change...

of course, i would think that would be true in any grad program since we're not undergrads anymore, we're grad students which is more like a colleague than a student...

im really not going to get into a discussion here about the relevance of the macro done at minnesota. instead, ill give you a few names that are / have been faculty or students at minnesota in the last two decades related to macro: krussell, rios-rull, townsend, wright, sargent, prescott, simms, wallace, kiyotaki, golosov, tsyvinski, uhlig, alvarez, gary hansen, lars hansen, pat and tim kehoe, kocherlakota, chari, rogerson, eichenbaum, kortum, boldrin, cole, krueger, fernandez-villaverde, ohanian, jones, manuelli and many more... if you like the kind of macro being done by these people, apply to minnesota right now and worry later about if you want to go there or not!

The Mirlessean thing started mainly because of the narayan, oleg and mike paper, in 03 in REStud. so its been around for sometime. i was just talking to a friend whos on the market this yr and he also told me that in his opinion, there needs to be something special brought in these model for them to survive in the longrun, as i had thought a yr ago when i saw candidates give their job market talks. i am surprised to find that static mirlessean papers are still being written. you mind giving names so i can see what they are doing? the guy at yale youre talking about is costas. yes, minnesota is trying very hard to get into trade theory, IO, and applied metrics and costas is a good example of this. his job market paper was just superb, and was related to the minnesota style of trade being done these days ala eaton kourtom 02, econometrica. on your last point, i turned down a better named ivy for minnesota, as did a few other people in my yr. its all about personal preferences....

i dont know if i know enough to say this, but the dynamic capital taxation stuff (specifically the dynamic mirrless problem) has pretty much been beaten to death and requires an innovation, such as inclusion of monetary policy in a cool way to stay hot. so I dont think the optimal fiscal policy stuff you said econstudent is hot anymore, or atleast will not stay hot for too long (although werning is still putting out interesting papers with farhi related to this stuff) i do agree that the cross of political economy and macro is hot and i think has a lot of potential to stay hot. golosov and tsyvinski are doing very interesting work there and keeping the good name of minnesota. undoubtedly, Minnesota is the second best place for macro, only after mit. you will learn more in a semester at minnesota than you will learn in a whole yr (and more) at other places. believe me, i go to minnesota :) although, one thing to remember is that minnesota has just hired a bunch of people in game theory, IO and econometrics so under kocherlakota, we are trying to be a more rounded school. so people looking into these fields should also apply to minnesota in my opinion now.

i wrote this a few months back and was rebuked for what i had heard. maybe this is pertinent to mention again, and see if someone has heard the same about UCLA econ. i hear that it was just not a financial issue, there were huge allegations (i do not recall hearing they were proved) of corruption, and because of how far into the econ dept this thing went, a lot of the faculty just didnt feel comfortable staying at a dept which had such a bad reputation now, and because of the academic and institutional integirty of the place was non-existent. If I am correct, 12 people went on the market last yr from UCLA econ, and most of them were able to move out. Others have left this yr I guess, including some of the younger faculty also. has someone else heard something along these lines? this guy certainly mentions nothing of what i had previously heard: http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/07.06.03.html

some universities have a rule that even after the faculty move to another university, as long as they only report to the university officially that they are visiting, the university depts have to list them 'on leave' eventhough its not completely true. that was prob the case with some faculty you guys are talking about. hope that made sense.

sorry, i didnt mean to be challenging, i just was wondering if its true or not. i love angeletos' work and if this is true, it would be extremely exciting news. im not at minnesota, but i will be in a few months :)

they might not mean the theory of groups, rings and fields when they say algebra. atleast, ive never seen any applications of these in economics. by algebra, they might mean linear algebra...

i can tell you for sure angelatos didnt have an offer from minnesota till maybe a week or two back. (i dont know what has been happening in the last week or so) i know they had 10 offers out this yr, and the bunch that were accepted. angelatos was not offered a position this yr at all...

would you be willing to tell about the source or its reliability about the angelatos thing. a few weeks back, i know angelatos didnt have anything at minnesota...