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My suggestion is very very rudimentary, and for sure it can mess it up with your file if you have many changes. What I do is just to put a % before the line that I want to exclude/update, and that's it. I get less confused doing this than saving several versions of the document with different names.

I guess the choice is obvious depending on what the OP wants to do. The Rand program seems to me more like a PhD in public policy. If you're not sure about the path you want follow, I guess UCSB might be a safer option. Don't decide based on location, otherwise you'll never decide (Santa Monica vs Santa Barbara, what a tough call...)

TexnicCenter is also a good interface. I prefer it over scientific workplace, I think it gives you much more flexibility, specially when it comes to tables and graphs.

I second that (Maillath, Postlewaite).

I don't buy this argument saying that a PhD in europe is not well regarded as a PhD in US. I think in general it makes a heck of a difference IF you're into a top 10-20 school, and this is definitely not the case with UNC. Otherwise I would go for quality of life. I'm almost sure that you're not gonna have a better shot in the job market just being from UNC vis-a-vis being from SSE. People will look the same way to you. What I think it can be the advantage of UNC is the fact that you can count on the statistics dept and also on Duke to take classes / finding an advisor. From what I know the finance dept at UNC is also very strong, which is also a plus. But I'd be really careful making the final decision, you have two nice offers, congrats.

I'm not sure you could have been a world-beating economist 70 years ago without the slightest inkling of math. Just out of curiosity, I checked who published in Econometrica 70 years ago. This is volume 6, and some of the names that you'll find there are: Irving Fisher, Trygve Haavelmo, Harold Hotelling, Nicholas Kaldor, J. Tinbergen, Frank H. Knight, Ragnar Frisch, J. Marschak and Paul Samuelson. These are the ones that I know. Well... I don't think we mortals are worse off because of the so called 'Jesus' profile of guys like Mihai. I think math is important to the extent that you have interesting and good ideas that might somehow require a high math level to be modeled. Otherwise, I would say that math for the sake of math will not take you too far (in economics) and unless someone prove me the converse, I don't see a straight (positive) correlation between being insightful and having a deep knowledge of math. Moreover, the impression that I have is that math was way more important at the time when general equilibrium theory was being developed, maybe 30 or 40 years ago. Nowadays I feel we're in the era of experimental and behavioral economics (we still have macro :)) and even without a knowledge of these fields I would say that math is not the crutial point (at the moment).

Most probably Mihai will be on the European Restud Tour. I'm also expecting Daniel Gottlieb (MIT Department of Economics : Daniel Gottlieb : Contact Information) from MIT to fare pretty well in the market. By the way, who's in charge of selecting the speakers in the Restud Tour? How does the selection process work?

I feel the job market this year will be pretty tough. I checked MIT and Princeton web pages and there seems to be a large number of people graduating. Does anybody know who are the potential stars in the market?

Fisher Black also had a degree in applied math. Recently a guy who graduated from IMPA (institute of pure and applied math) in Brazil was placed in the dept of economics at UIUC, Luciano de Castro « People « Department of Economics, University of Illinois.

Hi folks, I just want to share a video of a recent panel at USC about the financial crisis. YouTube - USCCollege's Channel Regards,

Well, if the OP is looking for a straight stats master this is obviously not the way to go but in Decision and Risk Analysis, Probability and Stochastic Systems and in the other areas of this department there´s for sure a bunch of stats involved.

I don´t see many people commenting on this program in this forum MS&E | Academics but in my opinion (even though I have no private info) if you do well in this master you´ll have fairly competitive profile when you apply to phd programmes. It´s quite related to statistics, and Luenberger is a faculty member.

For me it's kind of obvious that you're going make it at a top ten: you have perfect grades, distinction and a degree from a very respected university. For sure you have good people recommending you. The only thing you cannot be so sure about is MIT-Harvard. For both places what will tip the balance is WHO is recommending you. People say that this is for all the schools but the impression that I have is that for MIT-Harvard this factor is even more important. Personally, if the field you like is finance I don't think it's a good idea to go for a Econ PhD. The only benefit you have following this strategy is that it's easier in general to be admitted to a top program in economics than in finance. I don't think you need to bother about this. About going to Wall Street or whatever, I see a lot of people with PhD degrees in both econ and finance going to work in investment banks. If you want to do this after you're not going to have problems, for sure. What else? IMHO you should aim high: don't waste you time applying to "safety" schools, unless you're desperate to start a PhD. Instead, I'd apply to a masters at LSE or one of the top masters program in your country, I bet they place very well. To your list, I'd add UPenn, Berkeley, Duke, Carnegie Melon, LSE and London Business School. I'd also consider Caltech (by the way, Jacob Goeree is from U Amsterdam I think; they have very good people if you want to work with Mathematical Finance).

Along the same lines I would recommend the biography of Fisher Black. I haven't read but it seems to be quite interesting. There's also Market Wizards, a collection of interviews with top traders. And on the side, I really recommend Bukowski, Ham on Rye.

School: USC Required prelims: Macro and Micro; if you fail one you have to retake both When taken: First attempt: June Retakes: August Score required to pass: 2.5/4 Field exams: Second year paper instead of field exams