Mankins

Option 2, no question.

I like this idea. The music industry is a mess.

Jeeves! This is an excellent paper.

Carnegie Mellon

I'd like to add that I too have really enjoyed this discussion. If anyone has anything to add, I'd love to hear it.

I suppose I wasn't being very clear. As I said before, I think preferences/utility at the time of consumption are more useful for normative economics whenever they are available. I'm not suggesting that we can scan everyone's brain in every situation and determine their "true happiness", but I am saying that we might establish some very typical ways in which true happiness deviates from choice utility (biased decision-making). I'm simply suggesting that these biases should be taken into account for welfare analysis. For purely positive economics, it is probably enough to stay in a standard revealed preferences framework and just include the driving forces behind these biases as inputs in the utility function.

Congrats. See you in the fall.

Must concede? There are many brilliant economists and other researchers who would disagree with you.

The paper is full of "straw man" arguments of its own: "This separation enables the positive analysis to proceed without having to resolve difficult philosophical problems such as figuring out what makes people happy or who is more deserving of happiness" I don't know of any neureconomics paper making assertions about the latter. Also, figuring out what makes people happy seems like a worthwhile goal if we're trying to decide how to allocate scarce resources.

Gul and Pesendorfer claim that economics is not prescriptive, but normative economics (even under a revealed preferences framework) is prescriptive by definition. Why should revealed preferences be the preferred welfare criterion, and not happiness? What is the justification for using standard revealed preferences as a welfare criterion? Gul and Pesendorfer simply say that it is the definition of economic welfare. It is an axiom and is not based on anything, except maybe (faulty) intuition. Of course, happiness needs to be more precisely defined in order to be useful. I agree with "CLP" and others in asserting that preferences at the time of choice and preferences at the time of consumption are not necessarily the same (basically assertion 2 in the "neuroeconomic critique"). In a way, we are still talking about revealed preferences, since the consumption preferences have to be revealed somehow in order to be useful and informative. Gul and Pesendorfer actually have a paper on temptation and self control, which I have not read in its entirety, but it seems interesting. I will say that a problem with attempting to construct preferences that are consistent over time in the presence of temptation and a lack of self control is that agents are often terrible at empathizing with their future selves, especially when their future self is in a "hot" emotional state like sexual arousal. How often do you see sexually driven advertisements on TV and in store displays? Maybe this line of research won't "shake the foundations of microeconomics" in the sense that such a distinction between choice preferences and consumption preferences is necessary in every model. However, while neuroeconomists may not have accomplished this yet, if you could be convinced that an agent's choice preferences and consumption preferences were different, I'd find it difficult for you to justify using his/her choice preferences to determine welfare.

A letter from a nobel laureate will not necessarily get you into a top ten school, even if you have stellar grades. It should improve your odds, though, as long as it's very strong.

I might try to add mathematical statistics to that list, if anything. Taking PhD micro would be even more beneficial if you can fit that into your schedule.

If psychology and neuroscience are not to be used as the basis for assumptions about economic behavior, what would you suggest as an alternative? Anecdotal evidence? Philosophy? Praxeology? Pure conjecture? In my opinion, neuroeconomics and behavioral economics should and will substantially change economic thought, but it is not yet known in exactly what way it will change. Neuroeconimics especially needs more time to develop. I am also not a fan of Gul's critiques. He claims that behavioral and neuroeconomics are not economics but psychology, because the methodology employed is more similar to that used by psychologists. That is the whole point, to apply techniques from these other disciplines to economic questions. Gul seems to be implying that this kind of research should not be done by economists, which makes me wonder what value economics would have if it ignored such (potentially) relevant evidence about behavior. He also claims that economics is not prescriptive like psychology (sometimes), but rather descriptive; that we are not trying to suggest ways of improving people's welfare or making them "happier". This is a claim about the fundamental purpose of economics with which I simply do not agree. In econ 101, the definition of economics was something to the effect of "the science of allocating scarce resources". Why would we be interested in this topic if not to find better ways to allocate these resources? This is just pedantic, though, arguing about definitions. Perhaps it is pointless. My only point is that this research is not pointless, whether or not you consider it to be "economics".

There is a paper by Douglas Bernheim and another by Aldo Rustichini discussing the potential of neuroeconomics. Both papers are worth a read. It's a very new field, and it hasn't produced that much useful information yet. However, I think it has great potential to influence decision theory and the rest of economics in general, and can allow us to replace some of our questionable assumptions about behavior with new ones that have solid empirical support.

Yep. Not enough for a life of luxury, but enough for a life. I suggest taking out a loan and smoothing consumption since your expected future wage is high.

The classes you "plan to take in the spring" don't send much of a signal to admissions committees. They won't see your grades and you can always drop the classes during the first week of the semester, so they have no reason to believe that they make you a more qualified candidate. I'm not saying you shouldn't take grad analysis in the spring, just don't do it because of its signaling value.

I would advise against telling anyone they can "easily expect to be in the top 5". Even for the most qualified students coming from the top universities, it can be hard.

I think it's a helpful site, and a link to it in the FAQ thread might help increase traffic.

UW-Madison typically has a better reputation overall, although they have lost a significant portion of their more famous economists over the last few years. Even after all of that, the consensus seems to be that Wisconsin is better in most areas. I can't really comment on your other questions, sorry.

You're right, it's not even close to a consensus. In fact, based on recent placements and some of the things I've heard on this forum and elsewhere, I would expect NYU to be higher than Minnesota, Columbia, and U Penn. However, I maintain that these rankings are more relevant to graduate students than the ones based on faculty publications, as the subjective reputation of a program can have a significant effect on our potential placements. None of these rankings do a very good job measuring the quality of training provided by the programs, which is probably (hopefully) more important anyway.

The USNews rankings are based on the perceptions of professors in US programs, so they may be the most relevant to graduate students since these are the same people who will be offering us jobs in five years. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.

Congratulations! See you in August.

You can still do the problem sets if you audit a class. The difference is that if you do poorly on the problem sets or exams it won't show up on your transcript as a bad grade and make it more difficult to get into the graduate school of your choice. You seem like the self-motivated type, so I expect you'll still work hard on the problem sets if you really want to learn the material. I don't see how this is a bad plan.

In my analysis class we used Introduction to Analysis by Maxwell Rosenlicht, and Rudin was an optional text used mostly as a reference. Rosenlicht is much cheaper, but Rudin is considered the standard.

I think you made a good choice. Michigan's graduates seem to do really well, so I doubt it will take long to pay off that debt.