APJ

Yes, It is amply clear that there is trade off when you choose academic career as against corporate career. The terms of trade off include independence vs designated job, research motivated by passion about the question or subject vs research motivated by money making objective, opportunity to work on the topics of own interest vs at least at initial stages predefined job, leaisurly life style vs hectic life style (some say active), enough money vs rich. What is needed is that one thinks carefully before he decided anything. Its certainly not easy to give 5 years to a PhD program if you do not have passion for research. But I also add that certain jobs in corporates require hight level skills in finance/economics/mathematics and these are generally possesed only by PhD people. So even after doing PhD, you can certainly be well employed in Industry in a fruitful job. MAny of the corporates do give some space to write own reserch and even publish it. So not all is lost if one joins in corporats

thanks guys, links were really helpful

Dear all, I am working through SLP for dynamic programming. I am doing fine with it, but I am getting a feeling that I need to read something more intuitive as well at this stage. May be a worked example or simple explantion of bellman equation etc. Can anyone suggest me some resources on that? Thanks

Mathematical Methods and Models for Economists by Angel de la Fuente and Real Analysis with Economic Applications by Efe are good, accessible texsts.

Science moves ahead if scientist convert even obvious looking things in to scientific model. Though it is obvious that poor food intake will affect work productivity, mathematical model may lay the foundations for empirical analysis of questions of the form such as what is the extent of this relatioship between food intake and productivity etc. The fact that why economics could convert itself from mere collection of rules of thumbs to a science is the fact that economists have always tried to build models. Some of these might be ridiculous, but great discoveries have always come through solid theoretical models, which might have based on some seemingly unrealistic assumptions. The fact that economic studies now can not be dismissed simply by argument, but only by other scientific study is a great achievemnt of the field and I think this approach to abstarct from the real world has to do with it. In philosophy, any study will be refuted by a mere statement. This is not an ideal environment in which any field can blossom. Once convinced that this approach which economic sciences has adopted is correct, we can ask next question whether this approach has delivered any results? No one can deny that some of the magnificiant insights about how economy works have come through theoretical models: Information economics, asset pricing, labour markets have all been developed using same apporach which has enriched our understanding of the world to a great exent, even when models in isolation might have looked bit unrealistic.

It does not offer scholarship for economics. I was going through the fields of study which are eligible for scholarship.

Ecotrix + Measure theory. (In ideal world all three, but given constarint, this is optimum in my opinion) For two reasns: 1) Trix will be interesting to know before you start with graduate level trix 2) FA comes after Measure 3) Measure theory will be useful in its own right

I am from Asian University too. I did not have any research experience and my maths grades were poor in MA eco (Barely managed to pass). To compensate that I did another 9 months masters in mathematical finance and did well (fortunately) on that (Topped the program and thesis) I do not think lack of Research experience might have killed you. As fas as my college is concerned, none of the previous candidates had research exp. but still guys with good grades and letters managed to crack in to Princeton, NYU, columbia and at least 5-7 guys get through Maryland, Boston, Indiana, Pennstate each year. A very good RE might improve your chances but lack of it can not kill you. MAny of the candidates from my college who did RA with professors, J-PAL etc could not compensate for lower grades and got shut out. Of course, you have to be competitive in other aspects of your profile. For Asian Universities, they look for straong grades and some LOR's from the professors they have come to know over the years. Like, in my college a sprofessor writes letters only for bright guys. He is not well know (hardly has any publications) but the candidates he recommanded did extremely well in the program. So his letter will be valued a lot even when he is not famous. So for Asian Universities, these aspects might be more important than research work.

Yes, MWG is tough, but it is the most precise and elegent of all in my opinion. But you can refer to various sources topic wise. For example, Varian/jehle also are good for consumer theory and production theory as results are srandard. For industrial organization, you can refer to Tirole and for GE, Jehle might look more compact. Else you can look directly in Theory of Value for that matter. For moral hazard problems and related stuff, Kreps give you excellent intution and after that reading, you can go through MWG/Laffont-Tirole/Jehle. But MWG presents all in one and it is not like Green's textbook on econometrics (with no theme and uselsess notation). On the other hand, i find MWG intutive and precise.

As per email by Aude some time back, they offered 6 scholarships under TSE/JJ Loffont fund. 3 students were in waitlists including me. But since I am not going, someone lese might have got on the waitlist. This implies that they will/may not extend anymore funded positions.

I might pitch for marks improvement more than field experience. (If there is provision for retaking exams). If your grades aren't great/good, probably J-PAL may not help much to subside the impact of lower grades. You need good LOR's to crack in to Phd programs. I am not sure, if J -PAL job would give you imporved LOR's. A systematic RA under some professor might help more than J - PAL in my view, if retaing exams or additional course work is not possible.

I feel BU MA is more solid than UCSB. four reaons: 1) There coursework at least contains micro, macro and econometrics at a reasonably rigorous level (though not as rigorous as Msc in LSE or UCL is concerned). 2) There is some trend of students applying to PhD programs from BU MA. 3) There Ma job placements are better than UCSB. 4) You can always take audit courses in BU or BC or MIT etc, which is a great opportunity

hey thanks, thats useful

Dear all, I was just going through convex analysis and wanted the proof of Farkas Lemma. I came across couple of places where it is given, but they are not exhaustive proofs in the sense they assume some major result and Farkas Lemma comes out as a corollary. Proof given in Kim Border also does not give proof of it and Efe requires reading complete chapter on convex analysis to understand the proof he has given. Where can I get a clean proof of Farkas Lemma? Preferably from Linear algebra point of view. Thanks

Thanks asquare for such a detailed and very informative post. and thanks to you eigenman as well. So the sense I am getting is that your advisor is not going to help you out with each and every equation you write, but may guide your general direction of research and looking at the big picture of your model etc. Also seems to be lot of work from 3rd years onward. But one thing seems to be good that I can write on two linked but seperate issues as a part of my dissertation.