LouisBD

Time series can be taught on many levels. Enders is a pretty applied text. It just gives you a quick intro. I like the text and benefited from it for my undergrad thesis. Lag-operators are pretty standard, you'll find them in Hamilton too (as far as I can recall); and Hamilton is considered to be the standard grad reference. If you go to the more advanced stuff then you'll encounter tons of Laplace transforms. Check the work by Gourieroux and Montfort for example. But this is pretty advanced and specialized stuff.

Learning Stata and Matlab is the best investment in terms of breadth. Stata is good for data cleaning and straightforward graphing. A large part of the empiricists (especially micro-econometrical) use Stata. Matlab covers much of the finance and macro economics researchers. R and Sas are more idiosyncratic within the econ community. R is nice for Bayesian stuff. Sas is used a lot by the market microstructure gang -as they often deal with huge datasets.

The linear regression is the most popular empirical tool but certainly not the only one. Let me just give two examples: In IO, structural econometrics is a big thing. This can be computationally pretty intensive sometimes, but big fun too! Since Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes this field really took off (important older contributions too eg. Mcfadden, but powerful computers allowed for more advacned simulation based approaches). As an example consider for example this cool project on last-in first-out oligopoly dynamics: Last-In First-Out Oligopoly Dynamics [i might as well take an example from my uni]. as you can see this goes well beyond OLS. Not everyone likes this research area but I think it is big fun (note that I am not doing empirical IO myself). Another example is macro-econometrics. A cool contribution in this area was the JMP by Primiceri: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~gep575/tvsvar_final_july_04.pdf (although a bit technical). Lots of Bayesian stuff in this area (see the website by Christopher Sims).

If you have your mind set on experimental/behavioral stuff you may consider Tilburg too. Check out the TIBER website: Tiber Conferences - Tilburg University Some researchers you may consider to check out: Jan Potters (experimental) Jan Potters - Publications - Tilburg University Charles Noussair (neuroeconomics/behavioral) http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/center/staff/noussair/cv.pdf (a bit goofy journals over there but also AER, JF and the like) Tilburg is not a top 20 place, so it isn't strong in all fields, but it does pretty well in the experimental scene. Big names visit pretty often (List comes nearly every year). Not that into experimental so I can't help you more than this.

If you really want you can always find a use I guess, for example, Agebraic Topology: http://www.carloalberto.org/files/no.94.pdf I once even saw a paper which combined quantum theory and game theory... So happy that I chose not to pursue the path of a pure theorist.

Hmm, I do not think it is "the" ideal place but if you are smart in the choice of your supervisor; recommender; teacher of electives then it may do you some good. The KULeuven sends each year one or two students to the US top schools, so if you are among the best if not the the best, then it may do you some good. It is a one year master,so the usual caveat applies...

I have seen a couple of times people with double phd's. Some that come to mind are Jun Pan: http://www.mit.edu/~junpan/JP_CV.pdf (MIT) Don Kim: FRB: Federal Reserve Economists: Don H. Kim (Fed reserve) Anna Mikusheva: http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/4937 (MIT) Bram De Rock: cannot open his webpage but publishes well: Bram De Rock at IDEAS (Ecares) ... Coming from a strong scieintific background, these people often tend to go into the more mathy fields. It may be that some schools do not like people who want an additional phd. but it seems possible. If you like finance and you can get in stanford gsb (ok, this is arguably one of the most difficult places to get into) then you can hone your physics skills in finance...Duffie can get pretty mathy.

Graciela Chichilnisky: (from a wiki) Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Chichilnisky completed no undergraduate studies, moving straight to PhD work in the MIT econ department. She later moved to the math department at Berkeley, where she earned her first PhD. She earned a secondBorn and raised in Buenos Aires, Chichilnisky completed no undergraduate studies, moving straight to PhD work in the MIT econ department. She later moved to the math department at Berkeley, where she earned her first PhD. She earned a second from Berkeley's econ department from Berkeley's econ department But these are exceptions (given that she obtained a math phd at MIT, she probably has good brains)

Concerning econometrics, I do not consider Cameron and Trivedi nor Greene good texts to learn from. However they are great if you already know some econometrics and you need to look something up or you want to pick up something new for your research (say you are interested in stochastic frontier analysis, which is not covered in a standard econometrics course, you can look in greene, or you need a particular type of bootstrap etc.) To study from cover to cover, Hayashi is arguably one of the best although a bit advanced (but at the level any phd student should be able to grasp with normal efforts). The book contains just the right amount of things but views the world through a GMM perspective -which I my opinion is very elegant. Probably you want to do go through a mainstream text first. I think Verbeek is very good in this respect. Fairly easy (assuming you are familiar with basic linear algebra and statistics), covers a lot and not that thick. I am not familiar with Davidson and Mckinnon, but as far as I've heard, it is an excellent text too. Concerning time series, Hamilton is "the" reference although not the easiest to use as a study text. Enders is pretty applied but also a bit slim. It is a much more readable text than Hamilton however. Just my 2 cents.

Do 1 thing and excel at it. Try to max the grades in 1 program. If you can position yourself in the top-1 (or as close as possible) of your year, you'll have a great shot.

I assume that with wooldridge you mean the intro book (and not the book on panel data). Then it is quite a jump to Davidson and Mckinnon. You might want to consider to walk through Verbeek (Guide to modern econometrics) before going to Davidson, but it will depend on your background. I feel that Verbeek is a very good book, although not on phdlevel, it is very concise and covers a lot of ground. If you master that book, transition to advanced books is much more gentle. Among the advanced books, I feel that Hayashi is one of the best. This feeling is shared by nearly everyone who has familiarity with that book and the reviews on amazon are uniformly excellent (which can only be said of very few econ textbooks). It is good to brush up the basics of linear algebra and math. statistics before going through the book (but only the basics).

This is not true. It saddens me that some have decided to destroy the reputation of CentER. Yes, this year there were some griefs about the bad communication by CentER but this is in the past now and I am pretty sure that this will not happen again in the future. For what it is worth, a little over 75% of all research masters who wanted to pursue a phd have been admitted. This amounts to 18 phd students in economics. You may argue about this but I am among these and I can name more than 6 students who stay for a phd in my track alone. What happened is very unfortunate and I really feel that the administration should have had somewhat more consideration. Scaring away potential students with these false stories is just wrong. I am not sure whether this forum should allow such actions.

Ending up at the top of the grade distribution in mathematics at Cambridge surely would boost your admission chances but, 1) Do not underestimate what this would demand from you. You would need to have more than average math affinity and probably would be in class with IMO stars. I know 2 students from my country would went to Cambridge to study maths and both students records in mathematics were stunning (Gold national math Olympiad, medals in the IMO). 2) It is sort of an overkill and you would have to immerse yourself in things which are basically irrelevant for economics (although good brain training without any doubt). 3) I suspect that it would take 3 additional years in which you will have little time to deal with economics. While adcoms will undoubtedly be impressed with your mathematical training, they may be less impressed with your revealed passion for economics. I am not sure how high your ambitions are (where you woud like to obtain your phd). If you would like to boost your chances you can consider doing another master degree but you would need to ensure that you are at the very top of the distribution and you could only apply a year later (when your grades are available, the phrase summa cum laude on your resume and the kille lors). I do not want to question your ability but since you have already studied at LSE and obtained merit, I think you should be able to answer yourself the following question: "Am I able to obtain the top grades in all courses in study X at LSE while enjoying my life at least a bit?" With X I am thinking about a good degree like Msc Economics or MSc EME at LSE... Just my 2 cents.

1) Yes a week in the fall 2) Core courses: There is one notoriously bad teacher. Not sure whether he will teach this year, it depends a bit. You'll notice who he is straight away. Micro is doable. Just make the homeworks. Macro can be a pain. Tons of slides, tons of dynamic programming etc. I guess this is the same everywhere. Econometric Theory can be a bit abstract. But it is a very eclectic course and I feel that everyone should take it. I am not sure whether it is mandatory, I think you can also take a lighter course. A very good is the microeconometrics course by Klein and Salm 3) Depends on your background I guess. For most it is pretty easy to get a good grade. Again depending on your background you better put enough effort in (even tough it may seem simple) as this will be very beneficial later on. I am not sure wether there is a real killer in the core courses of the 1st year.

About your last comment (that you edited) : I already work my *** off and am quite successful. So I dont need your wise *** commentary about my personal life. All I want to do is to inform people. Dont turn this into a personal matter. None of my friends were expecting to be rejected after getting 7.9 or 7.8 or 7.7 . I dont think they deserve to be rejected. If you try to talk to other students and coordinators (professors) you might see how disappointed most of them are. (and that they are not expecting 18 phd positions for gods sake) Good luck to you on your defensive endeavor I did not intent to give you advice, let alone "wise" advice. I am a bit disappointed on this matter too. I indicated this earlier. I haven't deserved you degrading post. But hey, for sure you are right and I am wrong. Your posts were also so balanced that it is clear to the outside observer that I am the one ranting. Please refrain of degrading me any further or using stars to mask insults. I do not have the habit of letting someone insult myself. I have entered this discussion without the intent of explicitly defending the administration and haven't concealed myself. I think this deserves a discussion partner who does not use stars -which typically are reserved for insults (the reason why I react).

That is fine for me. This will be my last response on this. If you feel like ranting on against people who are unfamiliar with the program and destroying the name of the program you are attending that is fine by my -although I feel it is a pity. In the beginning of the year there was a presentation by the vice-dean and the administrative director. During this presentation they explicitly mentioned that you would need an 8 average, 8 on the paper and a supervisor to be sure that you could pursue the phd. They also made clear that in the past people with less than 8 average could start, although below a certain range this might become problematic. I was present at that presentation (feel free to question whether I speak the truth, I prefer things I have witnessed above hearsay and speculation) and this was held before all courses. So what is the point? Students are not believing this and thus this will not happen? If that is your reasoning that is fine by me. The more fruitful approach is to secure high grades and work your but off. I do not blame Tilburg for trying to be selective. Encouraging to apply for external funding is a good thing. Each additional grant makes a bit more room for an additional student, so why shouldn't they encourage students to apply. Why would this be related to the number of students they are going to accept. I agree that they are no masters in communication but if someone would have thought that with a 7 average and a subaverage rm paper he/she is a fine phd candidate then he/she was a bit naive. If it turns out that they have offered 18 spots than you have trashed them without a reason. Moreover, do you really want to study in a place with such a horrible people. Like I said, unless you feel like insulting I do not want to discuss this further. If you would browse through my older posts, you will see that I consistently emphasized the importance of good grades. Note that I am not the student with topgrades on my coursework nor a superb studax. I just feel that you are being unfair. I do not think that I can convince but you might want to consider Socrates three sieves before you continue your rant. I hope that you approach me once and we can have coffee to discuss this in real life -much easier in person.

Tilburger, I do not think this is the appropriate place to discuss these things. If you want to talk to me, this shouldn't be too difficult to do so because my name in real life is the same as my nick on this forum and I assume you walk around in Tilburg too. The number of PhD that they plan to take in this year is 18 instead of 10. I have asked for this right after I saw your post, which I found a bit disturbing. I got the answer straight from the director and as far as I know him, he strikes me as an honest man. Moreover, if you obtain straight A's and A on the research master paper, you are guaranteed of a position. This is not exactly the same as the fact that you need this -although I recognize that lower grades make it far more difficult to obtain a position.

I can understand the grief among some research master students but some remarks on the website are blatantly wrong. Anyhow, I do not want to come off as a vehement defender of Tilburg. I have a good time there but I can understand that others do not. There is indeed some attrition but the numbers overstate the problem. I can agree that the administration did a poor job in communicating some issues but the budgettary problems to which the authors refer seem unwarranted. I actually heard the opposite.

A straightforward thing to do is estimating consumer demand. Here are some papers which you can look at: 0. Organization of the course 1. Introduction to (New) Empirical IO - Reiss, Peter and Wolak, Frank. 2004. “Structural Econometric Modelling: Rationales and Examples from IO ,” Handbook of Econometrics, Volume 6, Pages 4277-4415 (READ CHAPTERS 1-7, PARTS ON DEMAND ESTIMATION) - Ackerberg, D., Benkard, L., Berry, S., and Pakes, 2004. A. “Econometric Tools for Analyzing Market Outcomes”, Handbook of Econometrics, Volume 6, 4171-4276 (READ CHAPTER 1) - Pakes, Ariel. 2003. “Common Sense and Simplicity in Empirical Industrial Organization”, Review of Industrial Organization, 23, 193-215 (READ PARAGRAPHS 1-2, 4) -Deaton, Angus, 1986, “Demand analysis”, Handbook of Econometrics, Volume 3, pages 1767-1839 (REFERENCE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND) Class 2 an 3: (January 22th 13.15-15.00 room ASP200-023 and 15.15-17.00 room ASP200- 024) 2. (Static) Demand Estimation with Differentiated Products: Logit and Nested Logit -Berry, Steve. 1994. “Estimating Discrete-Choice Models of Product Differentiation,” Rand Journal of Economics 25(2), 242-262. (STUDY) 3. (Static) Demand Estimation with Differentiated Products: Mixed Logit -Berry, Steve, Levinsohn, James, and Ariel Pakes. 1995. “Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium,” Econometrica 63(July): 841-890 (STUDY) -Nevo A. 2000. “A Practitioner’s guide to Estimation of Random Coefficients Logit Models of Demand”, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 9(4): 513-548. (STUDY) -Berry, Steven, Levinsohn, James, and Ariel Pakes (2004), “Differentiated Products Demand Systems from a Combination of Micro and Macro Data: The New Car Market”, Journal of Political Economy, 112, pp. 68-105. -Dube, Jean-Pierre H., Fox, Jeremy T. and Su, Che-Lin,2009. “Improving the Numerical Performance of BLP Static and Dynamic Discrete Choice Random Coefficients Demand Estimation”. Chicago Booth School of Business Research Paper No. 09-07 (STUDY) Be sure to take a look at the website of Kenneth Train, he has some great resources available online and you may pick up an idea from the references therein. Also think about Marketing-ish ideas. Marketing also uses discrete choice models a lot and a good source for datasets too. You can also think about starting from a published paper and try to "advance" upon it with the same dataset. You do not want to spend to much time on your datasearcg/construction. Some journals like journal of applied econometrics require that all published articles make the data used available. Good luck!

Ecares is very small but if you do well there then you have good opportunities. Quite some faculty is cambridge connected and it is not unusual to go to a US topschool for a while e.g this year Malherbe was on the market, he did his phd at Ecares, spent a year at MIT and got a job at LBS, pretty sweet I guess.

Yes I do. It is something very typically Tilburg I guess. In my opinion it is actually a pretty challenging program. I have followed the introductory course and some friends took other courses from it and it is really not to be underestimated. If your goal are private sector jobs then this program trains you well. Academically it is a nice choice, perhaps slightly more risky as it is less known. On the other hand, some of the teachers are really renowed so you may be able to get good lors out of it. Like I said, depending on your background it may be challenging e.g. the finance courses reach a pretty decent level. If you are interested in stuff which is related then this is good choice. The program exists because one of the main strengths of Tilburg is the Netspar institute and many researchers in Tilburg focus on issues related to aging and pensions (finance and economics), see also Netspar: Home Feel free to ask anything. Edit, I have looked at the program and the faculty teaching this program is actually pretty strong. I would not say all of them but all teachers in the two finance courses are pretty good, just like Bovenberg (introductory course), I guess one of the micro teachers too.

In the econometrics master you may expect to be in a class of 40 (wild guess) ME/EM, QFAS and OR/MS combined. Depending on the strength of the year, the number of cum laude will vary between 2 and 8. I can not give you a good estimate on succesful applicants for a phd in the US. I guess that you would like to have an 8.5 average which would put you probably among the three best students in the econometrics masters. Given that these have nice job options (for example a friend of mine with such a profile chose to work for Goldman), I would say 1 a year. Another thing, while I am in no way claiming that I would be competitive for a top phd spot in the US, I never applied for anything in the US. For many europeans constraints on location (due to family, girlfriend/wife, etc.) matter. At least for me it did and therefor I choose to go the university which in my opinion was the best in the neighborhood (although Tilburg is in another country, it is pretty close to my home country ;-) ). Also this may vary across European countries and probably also depends on private sector options (which may vary a lot across Europe). I think you that should keep this in mind when looking at hard numbers like jow many students were placed from school xxx.

The study of "econometrics" as a separate master is pretty unique, not that many countries have this (except for the UK). I think that an econometrics master in the Netherlands is a very good choice and receiving highest honors in such a study can deliver you great letters (and lead to nice placements). I cannot judge upon the non research master in economics but I think the key is not the program but how well you do the program. I am not sure what the previous poster expects from a master study but the econometrics masters in Tilburg have some courses which I consider to be rigorous enough. The econometrics master comes in 3 flavours: QFAS (quantitative finance and actuarial science), ME/EM, OR/MS. There is quite some freedom in choosing your courses. Some pretty rigorous courses are (examples): QFAS: Financial Models: This is an in between course (as the teacher introduced it), afterwards you should be well trained in stochastic calculus, be able to program fairly straightforward things in mathematical finance, know a bit about numerical methods in finance, derive Black-Scholes in a great variety of ways, be able to price derivatives you've never seen before => this means that this goes beyond Hull; you are able to do this because you are teached a general framework and not studied some Vanilla derivatives by heart from Hull, etc. Not on the level of Duffie, but certainly on a nice level, a nice prep course for a career in finance (academically or otherwise). OR/MS: Stochastic Models: Sometimes this is considered the hardest of the econometrics masters. It is more aimed towards business (very OR). This course is the basis for further courses like queing models. Said to be (I did not take this course) very tough (especially examination). Panel Data analysis of microeconomic decisions: A typical ME/EM course, indeed "less rigoreus" than the former two but I can tell you that every question on panel data I have seen on the internet (here or other places) was covered in this course. The teacher was outstanding (and a great researcher with last year an econometrica, this year already an AER) and with a pretty practical focus. Also dynamic panel models and the like are covered. Remember that these are masters in the Netherlands and not the first year of MIT's phd program. Few people succeed at getting an average of +8 (on 10) which is required for the judicium cum laude. If you would get this, you'd be in great shape to apply for the US. One may frown upon the level (the rigor) of these programmes. I am not sure that this is justified. I do know that if you are able to be among the best, than your chances will certainly enlarge. Given that APJ considers these programmes not that rigorous this should be a piece of cake. I think it is fair to say that econometrics students in the Netherlands are the equivalent of the economics/mathematics double major students in the US(although I am not going to claim that their education is on par): Here some guys who did well in a Tilburg master program and at now are doing pretty good as assistant professor (I think these are relevant examples): http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ralph.koijen/ https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/facultyprofiles/biomain.asp?id=05814749 https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/facultyprofiles/biomain.asp?id=39015949 Not too shabby I would say. Note that I do not want to defend Tilburg by any means, I just want to give a fair picture. It is true that the non-research master in economics is probably not the best choice (I think the econometrics master, preferably ME/EM or QFAS with an intelligent choice of electives is), but if you are at the top of the grade distribution you will be able to secure nice letters (note that you may have the problem that this is a 1year master). I know 1 example of a student studying this year in Tilburg who will receive killer letters. He worked hard, will do an some internships next year and apply next cycle with very nice letters. If you only obtain average or above average grades, the master won't do you much good (but this applies everywhere I guess).

Off course "real diseases" are difficult to avoid, but minor illnesses like a small fever or a cold can be quite annoying when you have a lot to do. Typically I sense that I am becoming ill slowly so I have time to react i.e. it nerver happens suddenly (so far). I have noticed that getting ill nearly always happens when I am sleep deprived. Sleep is important and you should be aware of cutting back on that in grad school -which is something I tend to do, because I like to do sports and go ou once in a while too. Moreover be a bit careful with the coffee. I think that healthy food might help a lot too -instead three pizzas a week :-(

Pretty sure that Donaldson was from LSE. Better check the facts before spreading things around: http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/5185