EnLaPlaya

One of these papers is here: http://www.ires.ucl.ac.be/DP/IRES_DP/2005-41.pdf

That´s because there is none. If you want to get a decent degree, forget this country.

double post

Just a few notes. 1) If you spend the first semester at UAB (which you can) you will take the first-year first-semester courses of the IDEA programme (Master), whatever the web page says. At least this is how it works right now. 2) scholarship: I just skimmed through the web, but it seems to me that if you come from the US (which I guess you do, I dunno) you get no funding whatsoever; you only can apply for a loan (erasmus mundus). If I am right, scholarship is generous for people from poorer countries (~Erasmus Mundus), but Europeans from EU/EFTA countries can get just regular Erasmus scholarship, which is about 300-400 euros/month. 3) from what I heard, management is quite awful. They fail to respond to emails, secretary on the phone just tells you (in French) that she can´t speak English (which is absurd) and so on. But in the end it works somehow. Check their websites. At least UAB publishes all of these info there.

(CEMFI, Carlos III, UPF, UAB) False, UPF Econ Master is a one-year programme.

What schools in particular are you talking about? There is a bunch of them which provide you with fairly good scholarship during the MA stage (ok, this usually forms a part of PhD programme in which you are supposed to continue on that respective school, but perhaps it might be a question of prestige for them as well to send their MAs for a PhD to some of the TopXX US places) and I wouldn´t say these programmes are extra tough to get in.

to wonderful&TruDog: Ok, thanks. It must be somewhat depressing experience for that portion of a class which has not seen the material before, but, gee, honor to whom honor is due.

Yes, with your profile it seems really foolish to aim so high.

What´s the point of taking classes where stuff such as Greene and MWG is used before entering PhD (ok, apart from signalling that you can cope with it appropriately)? Isn´t it just what is covered in the first grad year, so you only bother with that twice?

Perhaps this is a silly question, but can someone explain me why so much stress during the PhD econ admission process is put on whether the applicants can deal with elementary/high school math? I simply cannot imagine someone who has severe problems with such stuff and still aims for econ PhD; self-selection should work here pretty well and the test, more than an indicator of the applicant´s quantitative abilities, becomes a pain in the @ss. Does it have to do something with the American educational system, for instance? (I´m not from the US, I should say)

I spent some time with both of them and I´d say that you can´t go wrong by choosing either one. I myself would pick Gujarati (I really don´t know how guys here came to hate it), as Wooldridge is perhaps too elementary (uses too little math/stat in explaining the concepts which might make them to be understood too little) and somewhat less structured. Some advanced topics (such as the panel data mentioned above) might be covered better in Wooldridge (I only studied classical linear regression model from these books, so I don´t know), on the other hand I guess your test will be more focused on basics. If you can, get both of them or at least have a look at them and then choose one according to your liking. In the end, my opinion is that it never hurts to study from 2-3 textbooks at once (given that you have enough time), as exposure to various explanations of the same topic usually makes you understand that topic better.

Hi, are you going to post that thread? I´ve been looking forward to it for a week now :grad:

"Candidates without the GRE (point 5 above) test results will still be considered in the application pool, but the chances of admission strongly depend on performance in the GRE tests." ADMISSION CRITERIA - Universita' Bocconi

Europe: Barcelona GSE (~ UPF MSc.), UAB, U Carlos III, EUI, Bocconi... just to name a few. Guess you have an access to the internet, so you can easily find some more by yourself. They usually strongly suggest that you provide GRE results but I dare doubt they really play a significant role in the admission process.

Sometimes this forum is funny.

But unless general micro, macro and econometrics are hidden under the "master-level courses", you still have only one semestr of these, don´t you? And seminars do not count as courses, so we still might end up with just 2-2,5 semesters in the end. And note that you are to discuss your research right in the second or third semester after obtaining your Bachelor degree (if you go along that track), which is what I was curious about.

Just a brief comment on this: The PhD programmes we are talking about are taught in English and Germans count among the best non-native English speakers, so I somewhat doubt this is the reason. However, the only competent body to answer this are the adcoms (unless one has some kind of first-hand info), who precisely know the German/non-German ratio of their applicants. And I thought Mannheim was a nice city:(

As for German econ programmes, I´m quite curious about how one can obtain sufficient background for doing research in just one or two semesters (http://www.bgse.uni-bonn.de/fileadmin/Fachbereich_Wirtschaft/Einrichtungen/BGSE/Graduate_Program/BGS_07_002_RZ_3_online_version-1.pdf, Core Courses - Munich Graduate School of Economics, CDSE); could you please give some comment on this? And as it has been pointed out here lately, it might be quite tough to get in if you´re not German, as they seem to be biased towards students from their own country.

You´re welcome :p

Nope, their webpage just reads "Applicants are strongly encouraged to provide scores of the Graduate Record Examination or Graduate Management Admission Test (GRE/GMAT). Though not compulsory, GRE/GMAT results are often a key element for admission decisions. The minimum requirement is a score in the 80th percentile of the quantitative section." (Barcelona GSE), and perhaps I wouldn´t worry much about the "key element" issue.

As for the UPF case, I doubt they put too much stress on GRE in general and therefore must pay even less attention to AWA in particular. I got admitted to their Econ Master and didn´t submit GRE results at all. The rest of my profile would most likely not earn me a place at something better than US Top 30 (meaning that 30 or so would be the ceiling).

Perhaps it is worth noting what´s wrong with your approach. First, you tried to solve the problem by substitution, but messed up right at the beginning. The idea of substitution here is to reduce the number of unknowns in the system, so you should have been left with a function of only one variable (x) as follows: U(x,y)=(x^a)(y^b) s.t. y=(T-Px)/C plugging the constraint into the objective function leads to: U(x) = x^a*{[(T-Px)/C]^b} Differentiating with respect to x, setting to zero (f.o.c.) and solving (algebra gets quite boring here) give you the Marshallian demand for x. Substituting this solution to y=(T-Px)/C yields the Marshallian demand for y. Second, I don´t know why you set the utility to a constant. It might make some sense if you were asked to compute Hicksian demands but even in this case I doubt your attempt is correct (I´m a bit lazy to decipher it this time). MRS at the optimum is: {[a*x^(a-1)]*y^b} / {[b*x^a]*[y^(b-1)]} (= P/C) which reduces to: ay/bx = P/C As the guys here already proposed, the easiest way to solve this is to use Lagrangian approach (if you are not familiar with it, you have to check it out somewhere). For your convenience, the result should be: x = T/[P(1+b/a)] y = T/[C(1+a/b)] (these are Marshallian demands; I´m lazy to compute Hicksian ones) For exercises like this, I would strongly suggest reading Chapters 2 (The Mathematics of Optimization) and 4 (Utility Maximization and Choice) of Walter Nicholson´s Microeconomic Theory - Basic Principles and Extensions (I´m referring to next-to-last, i.e. 8th edition) as they are fairly short and easy but give you precisely what you need to solve this stuff.

You may, but by some kind of general agreement they usually count as European in such rankings.

Given what RFM - among other explanations - mean (RFM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), he might want to dwell into some marketing book as well. As to Plz case, I would suggest checking out Urban Dictionary: plz.

Guys, you´ll make me cry soon :doh: