nobigdeal

Some useful websites to help you: David Card teaches structural empirical labor at Berkeley: Econ 250C, Labor Economics Econ 250C, Labor Economics Chris Taber teaches grad labor at Wisconsin: Christopher Taber

Chris Blattman has a take on co-authoring that you may be interested in reading: RA versus co-author – Chris Blattman To judge whether there will be co-authoring opportunities, I'm willing to say a good predictor is the amount of academic research the economists have done while at the Fed and the number of working papers they have going on. The more time the economist spends doing academic research, the more opportunities there will be for you to co-author. Also, younger economists who have joined the Fed more recently may be more likely to collaborate. Two reasons: (1) Fresh out of grad school, they want to establish themselves as a serious researcher and keep the possibility of returning the academia open, so they will be working on a lot of projects. (2) If they are younger, more likely they will sympathize with your situation and want to help you out, be your buddy, and be more of a partner than a boss. In the end though, to repeat what has been said above, it's going to be up to you and your self motivation. The best advice I got when I started my job at the Fed was that co-authoring opportunities came to those who worked the hardest for them. If you drag out the policy work by reading blogs and TM all day long, you won't have the time to do anything more collaborative or interesting. Instead if you get the grunt work done fast, there will more time to talk to your economist about your ideas and give the economist reason to get you more involved. Also, you will get more co-authoring opportunities if you work 3 vs. 2 years. The first year you're gonna spend getting up to speed on the economists' current projects and becoming a Stata/MATLAB wizard. That 2nd year you won't have time to co-author if you're going to be going nuts applying for grad school (co-authoring can mean working more than 40 hours a week). Also, the economists much prefer 3 vs. 2 year turn over because RAs are so much more productive after their first year. Thus, in exchange for staying an extra year, there's often a tacit (or explicit) understanding that you will have more involvement in the research projects. One last thing. Co-authoring is, in my opinion, totally overrated. What matters most is the amount of academic research you get exposed to, both for your own development as a researcher and for the strength of the LOR your economist will write to help you get into grad school (more for them to write about). In the end, the co-authoring I did with my economist was on more policy-oriented stuff that probably meant little to anyone on an admissions committee. In the end, I got into Berkeley because I got an NSF. And I got an NSF because (well, I got lucky, but also because) I was able to demonstrate research experience that had broader impact (because of the work I did with my economist, co-authored or not), and most importantly I had the time during the day to talk to the economist I worked for and the other RAs about the idea many, many times. That kind of support is priceless, in my opinion, and why working at a Fed is such an incredible opportunity.

Attending: Berkeley ($) Other Offers: Columbia ($$), Michigan (no 1st yr $), Duke ($$), Northwestern (waived 1st yr tuition), NYU ($$) Comments: Getting the NSF made big difference. It helped me get off the wait list at NYU, and enabled me to more seriously consider Northwestern. Most importantly, it got Berkeley to accept me after an initial rejection.

:( oh well.

oh well. Just rejected.

My adviser who is a pretty big name in IO himself (and not at Northwestern) thinks Northwestern is incredible for IO training. For example, a student of Igal Hendel named Ben Hendal was one of the hottest job market candidates around. Ben had offers from a number of places for applying IO techniques to health markets and ended up at Berkeley. From the little I know about IO, I've heard that if you want to do applied IO what matters MOST is that you get the best possible training. The group they have at Northwestern gives you that in spades and is eager to see those tools applied to all kinds of interesting questions. You have to think about placements after the program... and NU just has much better placements from what I hear. They are so good at IO that I (who sees himself going into labor stuff, of which NU has very little to offer) am seriously thinking of going there!

Good luck to you too Caroline! To be fair to MIT, I bet they are waiting on the people they admitted who are deciding between them and Harvard. Also, there's probably a few people who got into MIT w/o funding and are agonizing over the decision whether to take out a loan (a painful decision).

I would like to revive this thread now that it seems I may get an offer from Berkeley. Any updates on the effect of Berkeley's financial situation? I'm most interested in their applied micro faculty and behavioral. Will this still be a great place to be in 5 years? Thanks for your help, and I'm sorry if there's another thread on this already. I couldn't find it.

Congrats on Harvard heraclitus! I haven't heard anything from MIT yet...

no response yet

I'm on the wait list and received an NSF as well.

Congrats to everyone! I've also received an NSF!

Hey All, I'm trying to decide whether to visit Northwestern on Friday. I was admitted to the program, but am on a wait list for funding. I have funding at Columbia and was pretty much sold on the program when I visited last week. My interests currently are in applied micro/labor. I know Northwestern is weak in this right now, and Columbia is strong, but is it still worth at least visiting Northwestern? In 5 years will Northwestern still be considered a stronger program, even if my interests in the end don't fall into Applied IO or micro theory? Thanks, NBD

I'm in an opposite situation. No funding from Michigan. Full from Columbia. I want to do applied micro/labor type stuff I think, and both are known for this. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to Michigan at this point, but, depending on what your friend is interested in (labor?) I bet the programs are pretty comparable. Especially if your friend wants to do applied micro.

Institution: MIT Program: PhD Economics Decision: Waitlisted Notification date: Mar 17 Notified through: email Funding: unlikely I'm sure Comments: Maybe they think I have a shot at the NSF?