strategyproof

Right, my mistake. Those outcomes are actually really good!

That's PhD placement. The question is where to do your master's in order to get into a good PhD program.

It's not always the best departments that run the best master's programs for PhD prep. For example, any PhD-granting department will try to run its terminal master's as a money maker with large classes where professors won't get to know you well enough. You could pay 30K and get nowhere at Duke, or 10K (in-state) at a decent California State campus and get into a top ten. You really have to talk to professors and find out whether they have a strategy for placing master's students in PhD programs. If they're not willing to answer e-mails from admitted students, they probably don't care enough to help you later.

Second this. Great post. Low-cost school with decent research-active faculty is the way to go, take extra math classes. Enrolling in math courses outside a degree program is not likely to work because you need reference letters. And people won't be motivated to advise you and write great letters unless they can place you out of their program.

I've heard of (top) students in low-prestige master's programs placing in top ten PhD programs, but it takes a lot of personal commitment from the faculty, in addition to your academic results. It's hard to know in advance whether you'll get that. If possible, talk to some professors I guess, explain your goals, ask how they've helped students like you in the past. (You might get better answers to that question than the one about where students have gotten admitted - master's programs in econ don't seem to collect systematic placement info.) whichmaster.com has as much detail as one is likely to get about master's programs in the bay area.

This website talks about career paths with an econ master's: whichmaster.com (in the San Francisco metro area, but applies more widely probably).

Master's programs are either prep for PhD admission or for some sort of applied econ job. In the first case, the brand doesn't really matter, so why shell out enormous amounts of money? What you'd want is a low-cost degree from a department whose faculty are competent, and motivated, to write good letters. In the second case, you should do the master's where the jobs are. (Columbia might make sense, but you could get something similar from CUNY for less.) Columbia's target market are probably wealthy foreign students.