vivek31

I think previous poster has no idea of what is talking about. Wooldridge is one of the best econometricians in the world and I think MSU has 4 or 5 top econometricians. If you interests are in public and applied micro in general, you should probably go for MSU. BC is more specialized in Macro

I think UNC has lost a lot of faculty in recent years. That's what I heard

you should check that the placements reported by uva, msu and bc are for permanent positions. sometimes schools report visiting positions mixed with tenure track positions. this gives the impression of decent placements but in reality some of the placements are only visiting positions which don't count

MSU is ranked higher than BC and at the same level as UVA (in some rankings actually higher than UVA). But your decision should not depend on rankings but on the fields you want to choose.

Well, asked my professor for curiosity. Says that Cambridge is comparable to top 60-70 in the US and UPF and Oxford to top 40-50 in the US in his opinion. But it's his opinion and you have yours. You would never agree ...:)

I don't see the basis for this statement. 100% of my professors argue instead that the quality of faculty at USC is clearly better than at both Cambridge and UPF (with Cambridge ranked certainly worse than UPF). The rankings above are in terms of publications if I am not wrong, ad I don't think there is any other metric for quality of faculty than publications. Again, rankings can be flawed but they are the only objective way to see things, the rest is personal opinions I guess. Then if you ask why European universities are in a worse shape than US ones, this is an interesting question I think.

I am not sure on what you base your strong opinion Italos. This is a ranking of world institutions and the only European universities among top 40 are LSE (20) and UCL (34). All the other European Universities are placed 39 or below http://www.bm.ust.hk/econ/JEEA.Ranking.pdf The econ.phd net ranking is very similar, with the exception that Oxford appears among top 40. Rankings: All Economics One can debate about rankings but at least there is some study behind them. Otherwise, one can have any opinion and say that the University of Oslo is better than Harvard

I disagree with Italos suggestion. I think almost all European schools are below top forty in the US. Maybe the only exceptions are LSE which could be at the level of a top 15-20 in the US and UCL which maybe is at the level of a top 30 in the US.

There must be some difference across schools. Harvard and Princeton are top schools, Columbia is second tier, Maryland third tier and UCI fourth tier. So the selection criteria cannot be the same for schools that are so different in quality of PhD program.

I agree with most of the comments. I think there is also very little consensus among professors. For example, once I also heard two professors in my department debate whether top two-three finance journals (such as Journal of Finance) should be treated at the same level of top 4-5 Economics Journals. Is the Journal of Finance like the AER or JPE? I am sure there are dozens of different opinions and I guess if one goes to finance deparments they have very different opinions from economics departments. Finally, from what I understand there are people who publish their job market paper in top journals but then they do not do much else and sort of disappear from the profession while other people never publish there but have a big record of very good publications and become very good in the profession. What I mean is that perhaps this debate on top journals is not interesting. What seems clear to me is that if one wants to become a star in the profession he/she must be able to publish a number of times in top journals, certainly not once only. But if we want to become simply good economists we will have to work to have a good record of publications over time rather than publishing once in AER and then disappearing.

As a student of economics I tend to trust what other more experienced people say, I avoid giving opinions based on my zero experience. Anyway it is very easy to surf on google and see what the profession thinks. For example, I found this statement by the Berkeley Press in Theoretical Economics, that is edited by very experienced and distinguished researchers in theory The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics "The Advances1 tier publishes articles that make significant advances in theoretical economics; articles that would be suitable for publication in a top general interest journal like Econometrica or the Quarterly Journal of Economics or a top field journal such as RAND or the Journal of Economic Theory. The publication rate is 10%." Which makes quite clear that JET is considered like RAND a top field journal in the profession. It's also easy to find this statement on the site of Theoretical Economics which is edited by important theorists Theoretical Economics which says "We seek papers comparable to the best papers in the Journal of Economic Theory and Games and Economic Behavior. An open letter to Promotion Committees [pdf file] from the founding Editorial Board explains our editorial standard and our commitment to maintain that standard." The letter defines JET a specialty journal. So it seems that the consensus in the profession is that JET is a top field journal like RAND, JLE and so on. But, again, I think this debate makes no sense since everyone will think his field is the top. My professor says it is the same for shools and journals "there are twenty top ten economics departments". Which is a fun sentence I think

Well, I confess that talking with some older friends of mines who work in theory and have published in JET I have never heard any of them say that JET is a top 5 journal, and of course they would have the interest to say this since they published there. Actually a friend of mines said among field journals he considers the Rand Journal better than JET (but the guy works more in industrial organization). And I have never heard this by professors either. From what I heard from my friends, theorists consider Econometrica as their top journal followed by Review of Economic Studies, which is a general journal with a focus on theory. A friend of mines who finished his PhD recently first submitted his paper to Econometrica, than to Review of Ec Studies and only after that he submitted to JET. My friends say that JET is a top field journal for them like JME is for macroeconomists, Journal of Labor Economics is for labor economists etc. As for the fact that JET is more honest than JPE etc. this is a statement very hard to prove. Finally there are many rankings around as far as I know. For example, my friends complain that JET has an impact factor below that of many other field journals, though I dont know what they mean by impact factor exactly and who calculates it. Anyway I guess this debate has no solution, I guess labor economists will say that Journal of Labor Economics is better than JET, macroeconomists will say that JME is better than both JET and JLE and so on. From what I understand the important thing is to publish good papers in good journals.

Noone considers JET a top journal. As far as I know JET is considered a top field journal, certainly not a top journal. As far as I know from my professors AER is the top journal followed by Econometrica and JPE and a bit below that QJE. Some people consider Review of Economic Studies as the 5th of the group but I heard some professors disagree on this. After this group my professors say JME is probably the 6th and after that comes JET 7th. But I guess that the more one moves down the less agreement on the ranking.

I don't agree with Israelecon at all. I don't think there is one ranking of economics departments published in AER or JPE. All rankings are generally published in lower ranked journals (people care about them but rankings are not top articles), so discrediting this ranking because it is in SEJ is not fair. There are famous rankings in Economic Inquiry, Journal of European Association that are both good journals but are not the AER. If someone does not like this ranking because the school he is going to is low, well this is not a fair reason to discredit the ranking.

You are right. I have just spoken with my advisor and he told me that Maryland has also lost Evans and Pries to Notre Dame, Gelbach to Arizona, seems they are loosing Sanders this year + Kranton and Jeff Smith

I read in another thread that Maryland lost four big senior people in two years plus some junior people. If this is true this is more than Kranton actually.

I agree that Maryland is a very good place but MSU is also very good especially in your field of interest

A friend of mines is in the PhD program at MSU and told me that Wooldridge is a very good advisor, though he has several students. Overall, for what I know the three departments are similar in ranking and quality. This friend of mines told me MSU has been expanding recently. I heard instead that Maryland is losing faculty, a big senior labor guy left, Kranton also left. Do you know whether this is true?

I have a friend who has a slightly better profile than yours and was rejected by Michigan State. I guess this is part of the randomness of the process.

I agree that the three departments are on a roughly similar level. Maryland has clearly better contacts with IMF, World Bank etc. But if you say you are strongly interested in Econometrics MSU is very good in that. Anyway, any choice is going to be good.

I think that overall Illinois is slighly better than Carnegie Mellon. This is also because Carnegie Mellon is quite a small department. But for Macro Carnegie Mellon is certainly better than Illinois.

"This is what I initially thought but, I spoke to one of my professors that graduated about 8 years ago and he mentioned he would go to Kentucky given my options. He got his Ph.D. in labor at MSU. He actually said Kentucky was not that far off of MSU..." I think your professor is totally wrong. As far I can see MSU is consistently ranked in top 30 departments, while Kentucky is much much below that (top 70?). In addition I found this on the faculty page at MSU which can be useful Labor it lists several labor people: Solon (who was Professor at Michigan I think), Haider, Woodbury, Elder, Biddle. A friend of mines also told me MSU is very strong in applied micro and econometrics which I think are very useful for labor. There is no comparison with the other choices you have (including Kentucky). Then if you don;t have money to go to MSU is another question

"Virginia and Iowa have the same number of professors... I count 32." You are wrong, Iowa has 18 professors, the others are visiting or lecturers. This is a better link Henry B. Tippie College of Business :: Economics Iowa is a small deparment with good quality. Virginia is a larger department. They are of similar level in my opinion, top 35 programs.

Michigan State is so much better than all the rest. I don't see the point of your question. In addition I think in labor MSU is probably a top 20 place. Go to MSU, no doubt

Nobel prizes, top 10 faculty...Antonio you seem sooooo proud of yourself. I really hope you'll be as outstanding as you believe you are. Finding out you are just a normal person and a normal economist could hurt a lot.