econger

Indeed very worth watching, a lot of interesting thoughts. Still, to get a balanced picture of the DSGE-profession one ought also watch Chris Sims playing devils advocate:

I am quite optimistic - the macro faculty seems motivated (people told typically 4-5 professors at the macro lunch), there are a lot of courses (2nd year sequences in macro and in international monetary economics) and at the flyout the amount of people who want to do sth. related to macro was astonishing - I guess (hope) they want a year now with a large group of macro-phds which can be advised by the enourmous amount of senior and junior macro faculty (and e.g. brunnermeier can also be seen as macro finance I'd say)

Institution: Princeton University. Program: Economics PhD. Decision: Admitted. Funding: 30k Notification Date: March 8. Notified Through: E-mail. Posted on GC: No. Comments: Nice :)

Institution: MIT Program: PhD in Economics Decision: Rejected Funding: - Notification Date: 02/29/12 Notified Through: Email to check website Posted on GC: No Comments: at least I was able to open it with no hope

Berkeley is surely a better fit than Yale. I am unsure about Stanfords strengths though... but maybe you should wait for their decision anyway before thinking too much about that ;)

Institution: UC Berkeley Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: - Notification: 2/24/12 Notified through: Such a humorous double E-mail as well Posted on GC: No Comments: Sad - and it destroys my hopes for the other ones. :(

Is there anyone who got a confirmation from Princeton concerning Fall Grades Report?

Oh, I have never heart of this adress - thanks a lot!

Okay, that's weird... Did you send it to[TABLE=class: ajC] [TR=class: ajv] [TD=class: gL, colspan: 2] econ-admit@mit.edu as well?[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Did anyone get an answer from MIT concerning sent fall grades? I sent an unofficial (selfwritten) "Fall Grade Report" to MIT in December and have not gotten any response yet.

Just to understand it correctly: You think I should send them kind of an "unofficial fall grade report" with my grades just written by me in an Email right now? And to maybe send the transcript in addition later? Probably you are right - I have three A's in advanced courses this fall, so they should know as early as possible.

I cannot see any problem with this. I mean: What they want is information to decide and you give it to them. Moreover, it would be a bad feeling, if in case of a rejection you never knew whether it was because you did not write "(grad)"...

I think that's a great idea. My knowledge: Harvard: one can send them (though it has to be a hard copy) - but they can not guarantee that they will actually take them into account MIT: One can send them via Email and they will be added to the profile. Princeton: One shall send them - via Email, I believe. Generally, I wonder if it is sufficient if I send them in 3rd week of January in which I get an official transscript - or whether I should already send them an "inofficial Email" the moment I get to know the grades (which is probably much earlier - already now I know 2 of 3 grades...). Edit: Now I have all 3 grades... seems strange to me to wait until the 3rd week of January now to send my fall grades... but will they accept an unofficial Email like "Hey, I don't have a transscript yet but my fall grades are: ..."?

Dear John, my main concern about Chicago is the "Freshwater-Macro-Approach". I know it is not your speciality, but maybe you can comment on how "special" the Macro is which is teached at Chicago. Sometimes people tell that Chicago-educated Macroeconomists can hardly talk to "Coast-Macroeconomists", because they are not really acquainted with all the models with non-perfect markets. I am sure that this is a bit exaggerated - still, there might be some truth to it? Best, econger

Great, thanks for the hint! Once again unbelievable, what fantastic google tools are freely available, that I have never heart about before!

Thanks for your anwers... indeed, a good idea to ask in the library, i haven't done that yet :) and otherwise I kind of have to "assume" how they estimate the gap... maybe that's sufficient for a bachelor thesis ^^

Hi folks, I am currently working (or beginning to work, better to say) with some of the FED's Greenbook projections in order to do some Taylor rule type monetary policy analysis (yeah, what a freakingly new topic :D)... I have found quite some digitalized data at St. Louis FED (which are faulty to some extend...) or at Philadelphia FED. Now, what I am looking for is historical data on the output gap projections of the FED in former years... while the actual output levels are, of course, easy to get and while the real/nominal GDP Greenbook projections are available as well, I cannot find anything about concerning the gap... the be honest, I don't even know whether the FED has worked with output gap projections at all in the past decades... Does someone know anything about it? Maybe where the projections are available, or, alternativly, which would be the FED-typical way to estimate output gaps/trend GDP? If I knew that (so if it were HP-Filter for instance), I could calculate output gap estimates from the GDP projections... Thanks for your help! econger

I guess, if we added Sargent, we would neccessarily have to discuss a wide range of other modern macroeconomists... Blanchard, Mankiw, Prescott&Kydland and such guys... also no reason then to forget Krugman or Stiglitz and many more... I don't think that any of all those very very respectable economists is - at least seen from todays perspective - as important as the other guys discussed/on the list.

Is Hayek so unpopular, since here made such an unrelaxed impression in the rap-battle with Keynes? Well, I voted for Keynes anyway... without him founding macroeconomics, I would probably not study economics today ;)

Paul Romer to a business school again? Do they pay the better salaries or is teaching the future business elite being part of his global development master plan? ;)

Interesting point of vew for an economist... i mean, typically we believe that individually maximizing people do, in the end, maximize welfare. In your statement however, the individually optimizing "happyness-orientated" master-economist (must be a real master... I think 99% of economic research does not help anybody in the world but is more or less fun stuff conducted for economists entertainment and self-justification/preservation of nice jobs ;) ) harms welfare. Do we have market failure here? The "public good" economic wisdom is not sufficiently well paid? And if so, is it really a "duty" to serve peoples' welfare instead of the own one? A question more suitble for the Philosophy forum (do we have a Philosophy board at urch? To lazy to check it ^^ ) Ah, so the ultimate goal is individual satisfaction? ;) I believe so, too. The outstanding unselfish people we see in history are probably persons that get a strong punishment from their brain, when they observe injustice or human suffering. Sadly, there is no more possibloy to put Mother Theresa or Mahamatma Ghandi into a MRT to check the thesis ^^ (Still, it might be interesting to check the brain activities of the most selfless people in our society... typically, only muderers', sadists' and rapists' brains are analyzed :D) Haha :D Consulting... I don't think there is anything in the world that would make me unhappier ^^

Do you believe that the academic success you are aiming at will eventually make you happy? Assuming the answer is yes,do you believe that it is the ultimate goal behind your ambitions? Or would it be just kind of a nice side effect? In my opinion people are, ultimatly, captives of the evolutionary process that formed their brains. That is, whatever you do, you do it to prevent punishment or to gain reward from your brain. I deny the existence of any motivation independent of the brain's punishment and reward systems.

I second Irrational. Tilburg may be the best in terms of academic excellence - but Frankfurt suits your research interests perfectly, is very near to the private financial sector and seems to have a reasonable program structure!

Institution: Harvard Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Notification date: 3/15/11 Notified through: mail Posted on GC: no Comments: well, at least it's nice that they did answer at all.

I'd also be very interested in these questions - plus this one: does it usually take near April 15th until one gets a decision - or is it also common that people are admitted from the waitlist earlier?