Bored

Stanford: I think both Hall and Taylor are still very active at Stanford. Last year one of Taylor's students working in monetary/finance stuff ended up at NYU Stern if remember. And I think Hall has a student on the market this year going to Wharton (though labor stuff maybe). It is not theory but Klenow is a big player in the field of monetary economics, mostly because his work on price setting seems to prove that the canonical model makes no sense. Piazzesi is most well known for using monetary theory to predict asset price behavior so think about her as well. Princeton: Brunnermeier is a monster, though perhaps more finance oriented (though you could say the same for Piazzesi and Schneider). I wouldn't worry too much about New Keynesian vs New Classical - outside of Minnesota the divide is hard to see most of the time (for example Sims and his rational inattention story for price stickiness). I wouldn't count too much on rumored new hires, since most rumors don't pan out. My suggestion is to go to Princeton if you feel fairly certain you will want to do monetary theory, but it is a pretty slight difference.

Based on the wiki it seems like you can add Warwick and the American Enterprise Institute. The job at Columbia seems to be at something called SIPA and Michigan at Ford School for Public Policy. I think they also placed someone at City College in New York. The website seems to list 17 people on the job market though, so it looks like far from a complete list.

My info is indeed hearsay, but is only a day old and as close as hearsay gets. Anyway, Stanford certainly made an offer to both him and Gita and from what I hear he has decided to accept and is only negotiating over pay. Of course I could be wrong or I could be right and he could change his mind but it seems pretty likely that he is going. If normal yield for these offers is 25% I would put him at 80%

Mark Aguiar is moving to Stanford evidently

This is a good point - Doctors need to be well trained (learn how to recognize previously solved problems and then apply solutions someone else came up with), whereas Economists focus on education (applying general principles and techniques to new problems that have been tackled yet) after a little bit of training up front.

Really? I would say it is one of the worst at matching people. In most technical fields undergraduate work is much more closely linked to graduate work and there are good subject based standardized test, which provide strong signals about your ability to handle graduate level work. Neither is true in economics. In most nontechnical fields, it is possible to do solid research without having graduate training (since you don't need to tech up as much to do research), so past work is a strong indicator of potential. Not really the case in economics. In economics you get in based almost entirely off the willingness of a professor to vouch for you - simply because there is no other way. This means that someone with the potential to become the worlds best economist is going to have a hard time getting in if (s)he doesn't know the right people. Alternatively, if you get in close with someone, your actual ability at economics becomes secondary. Quantitatively, look at the tremendous variation in the quality of admits/rejects. We don't really have a base for comparison, but it is hard to explain why there are so many people getting into great schools, but being rejected from lesser ones.

How are you going to credibly signal that you will most likely accept?

Well you could always say compare residency to the time before a tenure review - then medical school and getting a PhD are comparable in terms of time. Also I have plenty of friends at both top 3 medical schools and top 5 econ programs. From what I can see, the first year of an econ PhD is way harder than anything in medical school. The level of the average students is just so much higher (then again the third year of a PhD program is probably the most laid back of all).

Here is an interesting article on how the financial crisis has affecting Harvard's endowment. I've always felt that this crisis would be bad from schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton that are very dependent on their endowment, but it seems like Harvard in particular mismanaged their finances: Drew Gilpin Faust and the Incredible Shrinking Harvard - Boston Magazine But, hey it seems like the department has been hiring.

I think Robert is George's son. Also, that placement list is not particularly impressive for Harvard. Hardly any pure econ placements in top departments. A fair number of schools placed better this year.

Then go ahead and start making some changes - it is a work in progress! Some of those names are not there since they didn't leave from/go to an Econ department. Joint appointments are tough - hard to know what to do. My gut is towards keeping the list from getting too long. Maybe include people who are list themselves as professors of economics (like Collins) and not those who don't (like Dynarski). And to be fair both Smith and Borgers joined in 2005 (if we included 2005 the list would be a ton longer, though some people make have snuck by).

Yeah sorry about including some marginally school in the top ten, but it seemed like a better idea than splitting hairs (though I guess you have to split them somewhere). We also don't have a definitive timelime. Does only considering moves made after 2005 seems reasonable? It seems like the list will get a bit too long if we move father back. Does that mean we should drop someone who we have? Also it would be great to list people in order of the timing of moves but I definitely don't know enough to do that. I updated the list with everyone's suggestion [minus the people I thought (with some CV checking) had moved before the cutoff - Shimer, etc.] MIT (+Townsend) Harvard (+Chetty, -Hoxby, -Moreira, +Imbens) Princeton (-Krueger, -Bernanke, -Svenson, -Reis) Stanford (+Jones, +Bagwell, +Hoxby, +Schneider, +Piazzesi, +Hong) Chicago (-Goolsbee, -Townsend, +Kortum) Berkeley (-Chetty, -Jones, -Romer ©, -Shapiro, -Farrell, -Imbens) Yale (+Horner, +Vytlacil, +Chen, -Pearce) Northwestern (-Matzkin) Penn (-Wright, -Rios-Rull, +Persico) NYU (+Graham, +Cogley, -Chen, -Eaton) Columbia (-Bagwell, -Vytlacil, +Ng, +Uribe, +Schmitt-Grohe, +Reis, +Bai, +Moreira) Minnesota (+Rios-Rull, -Kortum) Michigan Wisconsin (+Wright,+Williams,+Taber,+Lentz, -Manuelli,)

Updated a little below: MIT (+Townsend) Harvard (+Chetty, -Hoxby, -Moreira, +Imbens) Princeton (-Krueger, -Berknanke, -Svenson, -Reis) Stanford (+Jones, +Bagwell, +Hoxby, +Schneider, +Piazzesi, +Hong) Chicago (-Goolsbee, -Piazzesi, -Townsend) Berkeley (+Kline, -Chetty, -Graham, -Jones, -Romer ©, -Shapiro, -Farrell, -Imbens) Yale (+Horner, -Kline, +Vytlacil) Northwestern (-Horner) Penn (-Wright, -Rios-Rull) NYU (+Graham, +Cogley, -Schneider) Columbia (-Vytlacil, -Bagwell, +Ng, +Uribe, +Schmitt-Grohe, +Reis, +Bai, +Moreira) Minnesota (+Rios-Rull) Michigan Wisconsin (+Wright) I think you guys are right, this makes more sense informatively than to try and rank programs. Also I understand that government jobs are temporary but on the other hand who knows they are going to come back (wasn't Varian's appointment at Google supposed to be a temp thing for example) so I figured I would include them until they returned. I also went for more recent moves than 5 years to keep things from getting out of hand.

The rankings thread combined with all this talk about faculty moves made me think about what a ranking of school based on faculty moves would look like. Seeing as faculty hires are perhaps the best leading indicator of school quality we have it might be pretty useful. I restricted myself to what seemed like most commonly listed top 10 schools: MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley, Yale, Northwestern, Penn, NYU, Columbia, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin. I only considered moves within the last 5 years that I could remember off the top of my head (so it is a little macro focused). I could use help adding to the list of who moved. Then maybe we can think about ranking them. MIT Harvard (+Chetty, -Hoxby) Princeton (-Krueger, -Woodford, -Berknanke, -Svenson) Stanford (+Jones, +Bagwell, +Hoxby, +Schneider, +Piazzesi) Chicago (-Goolsbee, -Piazzesi) Berkeley (+Kline, -Chetty, -Graham, -Jones, -Romer ©, -Shapiro, -Farrell) Yale (+Horner, -Kline) Northwestern (-Horner) Penn (-Wright) NYU (+Graham, +Cogley, -Schneider) Columbia (-Bagwell, +Ng, +Uribe, +Schmitt-Grohe, +Rios Rull, +Woodford) Minnesota Michigan Wisconsin (+Wright) I am sure there are a ton I forgot, but I only had 10 minutes (have to grab a late lunch). Additions very welcome!

Yeah, keeping Card around should definitely be Cal's number 1 priority. From all accounts he is rather attached to the idea of teaching at a public school, so I don't think they should be too worried on that front. Unfortunately I have heard that Aguiar is not moving to Berkeley (from a student at Rochester though, so it might be wishful thinking). Regarding the junior market, any word on recent hires? They were very active 5 or 4 years ago, but I haven't really heard of them managing to attract any of the top candidates since then. I don't really know the junior market that well though. Overall, Cal has a really deep roster of talent. Losing the kind of guys they did will seriously hurt any department but as long as they can stop the bleeding and convince everyone who went to Washington to come back I would not be too worried piffle.