asianecon

hotfuss: That's what I've heard but I've never seen it documented anywhere.

I hope to meet you guys later

Actually this is not that unusual. Maybe not completely under the table but hopefully you know what I mean...

Égide - Results and statistics http://www.egide.asso.fr/jahia/webdav/site/egide/shared/docs/appels/eiffel/Eff_Laureat_EG_2010.pdf

Again, I don't know why some people think Northwestern is an RBC school just because we're right by the lake. This freshwater vs saltwater thing is getting old. To quote Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan's "New Keynesian Models: Not Yet Useful for Policy Analysis": "The competing tradition is favored by many New Keynesians. Typified recently by the work of Lawrence J. Christiano, Martin Eichenbaum, and Charles L. Evans (2005) and Frank Smets and Raf Wouters (2007) ..."

I'm not sure what you mean by New Keynesian models but if you pick up Gali's book or look at how the Calvo model is solved (e.g. deriving the New Keynesian Phillips Curve), you'll see a lot of log-linearizations going on. Of course you also need to fix utility functions and all that. These are not unique to DSGE models.

If you apply early to McManus, I don't see why you won't be allocated a room. It might not be your desired choice, e.g. one bedroom, but most likely they would give you something. McManus is pretty good compared to Engelhart and prices actually don't differ that much. If I knew earlier that Econ students can stay at McManus (that is what I heard), I would've applied there instead.

I was actually thinking of asking him/her the very exact question. Assuming he/she is from Australia, I say Chicunomics should be more than curious than I am.

Two years ago, a few TMers requested a TM day the day before the flyout. I didn't attend it but you can ask Mercedes once you've got the numbers.

I talked to a friend from UofC and this is what she told me (as far as I remember so take this with a grain of salt). No, the rumors about List going to Stanford or some other school are not true. What is true however is that there _was_ an offer from Amazon, but it seems it's been turned down. Anyway, it would be nice if List comments on this, especially for the sake of those who are very much inclined to go to UofC because of him.

Don't take this as a guarantee or anything but from my limited observation, getting funded, either by the department or even Kellogg (through teaching MBA classes) after the first year is not uncommon. As for the first year, there are ways to earn money, maybe not as much as to cover all your living expenses. What you need to get at least is a tuition waiver.

Regarding Toulouse and IO: Toulouse is probably one of the few places left on earth that takes theoretical IO seriously. If you look at most top programs in the US, they offer 1 course/half course in theoretical IO then all the rest is empirical. I've talked to two well-established IO guys and this is what they said 1. More empirical IO guy but still delves into theory: Theoretical IO is dead 2. Top notch theoretical IO guy: It's not dead. It's just harder to publish papers since now you actually have to generate new insights not just some extension (unlike before) Ok going back to Toulouse, they actually have strong empirical IO people, although not doing NEIO ala BLP or dynamic stuff. They teach production function, stochastic frontier estimation etc which can be considered the old empirical IO stuff. Also, they have a couple of people who are great metric theory guys and are now dipping their hands on set identification stuff. But these guys as far as I know are more of the paper and pencil theoreticians rather than the computational-types, so I don't foresee them doing NEIO kind of stuff.

This IDEAS ranking is very fishy indeed. Jean Tirole is #17 in overall authors yet doesn't even appear in the IO ranking. It seems also the IDEAS rankings tend to favor macro guys. For fun, I actually registered for IDEAS last night. A paper that was identified to me actually have a couple of AER citations that I know of, but CitEc only identifies a couple of citations and these are all from working papers which sucks (for me i mean, not thw working papers). It's weird since the older AER paper has an entry in IDEAS so supposedly this should come up. It seems then that the system has some bugs which tend to give more weight to working papers, instead of published ones. Oh and to add, it looks like field rankings are scored based on announcements of field journals. Thus if you publish an IO paper in a general interest journal such as ECMA, AER, JPE, QJE, etc, it won't come up (or at least isn't scored higher say compared to JIE, all things equal). This is obviously flawed and would tend to give lower rankings to IO papers that are more "significant" (or to IO stars who publish in the top general interest journals).

I was able to survive a year in Toulouse with barely knowing any French. It's do-able but a pain (especially the admin stuff outside school, e.g. internet connection at home, calling for a cab, etc...anything school related, you're fine) But definitely you have to learn french one way or another, although I know some senior students (4th and 5th yrs) who can't really converse in French.

To add, for most heavy lifting stuff, you have access to computer clusters such as those provided by SSCC Overview (registration is very easy) I'm pretty sure there are some grid computing power available but I don't know (and currently don't need access) how. Also, if you're able to work with somebody connected to NBER, you'll be able to access their supercomputers (my account is actually still active but I've used it only once so far to do some parallel stuff for my previous RA job)

I'm actually also planning to buy a macbook air. I'm just curious, is SWP 5+ available for MAC OS? Anyway, for the first year you pretty much don't need a computer. As for programs, the times we used stata or matlab, one can use the econ computer lab or connect to the soc sci cluster computers to access the programs via SSH. Oh btw, I currently live at Engelhart and plan to stay here. I actually find the price reasonable, although I envy those who can stay at McManus (almost same price but much bigger rooms and better facilities). The twin studios are quite small but I think the 1 bedrooms are nice.

when i was searching for pictures of NWU before, I didn't really find anything that would compare to the likes of Yale and Stanford. However, these pictures taken by a former classmates would make you fall in love with Evanston! http://hez.wazhez.com/?page=60 The Best Years of Our Lives :: autumn in evanston I The Best Years of Our Lives :: lake michigan

I don't know how funding works right now but for me, Eiffel funded my M2 and word on the street before was that they don't like people leaving once they accept the scholarship for the Deeqa onwards (from Ministry of Research). I guess rule of thumb is if you get funding that is for m2+Deeqa+the rest of PhD, you better think twice before you leave the program. Otherwise if funding is just for M1+M2 (which I think would be the case), nobody would take offense once you leave after M2 (but makes sure you tell them you're not accepting the Deeqa+beyond funding so that they can allocate it to someone else).

Extremely possible. Just make sure to find the right person to write you a LOR. I actually found it difficult since classes alone don't give you enough opportunity to "get your name and face known". What helped for me is that I got the best marks for the class taught by my thesis advisor so he knew me quite well even before doing the thesis.

I did M2 (Eco-Math) in Toulouse since during my time, M1 was taught in French. Most people who survive M2 actually prefer to stay in Europe so it's hard to say how placements are really. Nonetheless an adcom from a top 5 school told me that I didn't need to do the RA job and they would've accepted me otherwise. Some people even hinted that it might have hurt me a bit (since it kinda signaled that I'm quite weak when it comes to applied empirics).

EPM, posts like this sometimes make me regret not going there (especially in light of recent placement outcomes)..oh well...

You can also take a look at some of Townsend's work

Apply to Toulouse. We still have a good reputation there and you have a good shot for the Eiffel scholarship (3/3 in the past 5 years). PM me if you need more advice and so that we can talk through YM etc

Check out: http://www.econ.northwestern.edu/phd/graduate-connection.pdf for some NWU stats

Definitely. In fact, I think LORs from known and active people are the most important part of the application, at least in terms of boosting your apps (ie not necessary but can make a huge difference). With LORs from obscure people, your app should stand out in other aspects. Also, it helps if the adcoms know someone from your school or country who can vouch how good you are based on what they can see on paper. What this person says would weigh more than a LOR from an obscure professor, even if the professor graduated from a top program a decade ago. I'll even opine that professors who came from top programs but got lost to obscurity are looked down upon by adcoms.