bauble

It's also useful for exercising and improving your skills in economic intuition. The intuition in calc/analysis isn't exactly the same as in branches of economics, but there is enough similarity so that the skills are complementary. In general, it's probably helpful to get away from the "am I specifically going to be using Theorem 5.4 on p. 125 in my career" mentality into a more broad notion of "will this help me become a better researcher."

Yeah, I don't know how much "traditional" game theory comes into play. But look at Tirole's work. He would be one of the names that come to mind in looking for an intersection. For "micro" growth models, aside from using computer modeling, you have to abstract in one way or another away from 100000 unique firms. Either you reduce to small number of firms (like 2), or assume that some underlying continuous distribution of firms (distribution in the sense of some underlying quality such as efficiency). There are examples of both in the IO and innovation literature.

AJNewey's on the right track. Here's my understanding, which admittedly is a bit shaky. Broadly, the intuition behind some of the growth and innovation literature is that growth in part is affected by incentives to invest in innovation. Game theory comes into play in analyzing these incentives and therefore in building microfoundational models of growth (of which there are many). Not all of these involve game theory though.

The variability of effort needed in a Ph.D. makes holding a PT job pretty tough. Apart from that, significant part-time work above RA/TA is sometimes frowned upon, and in some cases I think that there are formal (and low) limits imposed by the b-school or dept on how much you can work outside of the program (with RA/TA counting as "inside").

In top (20 say) programs, the workload is high. Definitely not 40 a week. There is a lot of variation week to week, so a light week might be like 40-50, but when deadlines or times come when you realize that you are under the gun, there are weeks when you are working non-stop (80 or more hours). If I had to guess an average, I'd say it is 60 or maybe more for most people.

Realistic advice? Your concern for the poor souls who might be walking into a time-bomb by going to Chicago not fully funded is touching, truly it is. May all be so fortunate to have an advisor as good-willed as you. But let me offer up a couple of alternate, economically motivated alternate theories: 1) Social welfare will increase if the ignorant masses all go into the top schools thinking that they are "the chosen one." Economics will advance faster as a result. 2) Personal welfare is an open research issue as well. In other words, even many of those who go to Chicago (or other top school) and ultimately bomb out will have higher net utility, all things considered, than if they went to podunk u. There are a number of externalities to consider.

There are probably some reasonable hypotheses here, but you know what? Who cares? No one wants to hear that the odds are better for people with stellar records coming in except those with such stellar records who are insecure or feel they are entitled to inherit a distinguished academic career. In other words, nice people like rooting for underdogs and nice guys. This should be abundantly obvious from this forum.

Beyond the signaling aspect and getting into grad schools, there is also the notion of breadth vs. depth of learning. There is likely to be a substantial tradeoff in your case since you got some B's and are worried about prospects of doing so again. Both things considered (signaling + learning), it seems like it is better to take a more manageable load and ace those classes.

I respect your enthusiasm. But two things: 1) take the mental break, as many others have suggested. 2) You'd be doing well to cover a decent fraction of any single one of those first few books in a summer. If you must do something, then my suggestion would be to skim through notes that are listed in econphd.net instead, e.g. the Nolan Miller micro is a pretty good self-read.

Top tier programs overwhelmingly favor research over teaching, so we're just splitting hairs. But the idea of entering the job market with zero teaching experience (either TA or instructor, and counting teaching experience prior to starting the Ph.D.) is a very risky proposition. You might be hard pressed to find someone (and we're of course talking b-school here) who has successfully done it.

Teaching is one of those things that research (particularly top) schools like to dismiss, but as a practical matter teaching is a requirement for junior faculty everywhere that I know of. So it strikes me as weird then that people could potentially come out on the job market with zero teaching as might happen in the future with USC grads. But then again, it is hard to imagine that a person who gives a good enough job talk to get a job can't teach.

I don't think that inflation makes such a huge difference. It's extremely difficult to say how a student would have done at school X rather than the school she attended, even with "perfect" performance data. Clearly, selection and endogeneity problems abound. So, profs know certain (well-known) schools and have their built-in adjustment factors, right or wrong. If they don't know the school, then the other factors become more important. To sum things up, grade inflation merely adds a sprinkling of uncertainty to an inherently uncertain and ambiguous assessment process.

Well, getting a good placement is pretty hard in general. And it is quite possible that age came into the equation in some fashion for your acquaintances. But the "long time horizon" argument is questionable. Profs are pretty smart, so I just doubt that they'd miss noticing that 80% (or whatever the number is) of their senior colleagues moved schools within 10 years of initial placement, so why worry about whether their research longevity is 10 or 30 years?

I've heard this argument a few times, but I've yet to be convinced by firsthand experience. Two reasons: mobility and the prospects of dialing down "research active" status substantially after tenure. Mobility tends to be higher for younger folks, and the problem is exacerbated by hotshot status. Case in point: I almost went to a school to work with a young-ish hotshot, and he is no longer there. Granted, every school would love to have the iconic scholar who will chair the department at some point and bring fame and fortune to the university for the next 30 years, but I just can't see how hires can be based very strongly on that given my above points.

Simply put, the main emphasis is on demonstrating that you will become a good researcher. You've got to convince people that the low GPA was due to "the foolishness of youth" or something like that, and that you are past that and that the "true you" is a capable researcher. Whether you articulate this in the SOP is another question, but to your original question: High GPA and GMAT signal that you are smart, which is not the same as being a good researcher, but it is one of attributes that is highly correlated with it. The best way (in my opinion) is to take hard classes that the profs know are hard and ace them. For accounting, that would be (grad level) econ and maybe some finance classes I would think. Math classes (e.g. real analysis) would also do, but accounting profs would be less familiar with those in general. Doing good research, such as in an RA capacity, is perhaps a more direct signal of research potential. Making this signal credible is a bit more of a challenge though. Short of solo-authored work in a top journal, you'd have to get a rec from a prof that knows the faculty at the place to which you are applying.