andyecon

Hi gll07, I guess you won't be at the Minnesota recruitment weekend, so you might not hear this, but our placement this year are: Wharton, Texas, 2 x IMF, Cleveland FED, ITAM, Macalester College (1 tenure track, one visiting), Max Planck Institute, Amazon, University of Queensland, and various Chinese universities. I can't say much about the Carnegie Mellon placements, but I know they are small so it may not be very easy to compare in any case. Good luck with your decision!

When I first started learning Latex, I used Michele Tertilt's notes and examples here: Michele Tertilt I'm sure there are others.

If you are affilitated with a University that has a subscription (as in, you have an email address with @____.edu), then you can get NBER to email it to you. There is a link at the bottom of the page that says something like "Users expecting access should click here." Also, after reading this it is fun to go and read Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan's take on the same issues- "New Keynesian Models: Not Yet Useful for Policy Analysis"

If you are affilitated with a University that has a subscription (as in, you have an email address with @____.edu), then you can get NBER to email it to you. There is a link at the bottom of the page that says something like "Users expecting access should click here." Also, after reading this it is fun to go and read Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan's take on the same issues- "New Keynesian Models: Not Yet Useful for Policy Analysis"

If you are affilitated with a University that has a subscription (as in, you have an email address with @____.edu), then you can get NBER to email it to you. There is a link at the bottom of the page that says something like "Users expecting access should click here." Also, after reading this it is fun to go and read Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan's take on the same issues- "New Keynesian Models: Not Yet Useful for Policy Analysis"

Right now, we (Minnesota) are reasonably strong in IO. We have Pat Bajari, Amil Petrin, and Tom Holmes as senior faculty... Kyoo Il Kim and Minjung Park are junior faculty doing IO/Metrics stuff. Lots of students are getting interested in working with this group, and a student that was shared by Bajari and Holmes was placed at UToronto this year. Just letting you know, Minnesota isn't just macro.

I know of one person who transfered to the applied economics program here at UMN because he did not pass prelims. I don't know if it is the standard, but it has happened.

Many people love Uhlig's toolkit paper and programs: "A toolkit...", by H. Uhlig

School: Minnesota Required prelims: Micro/Macro Theory When taken: Early June after first year. Retake: August before second year, June after second year, August after second year... can apply to take again in June after third year. Score required to pass: Three grades- PhD pass, Masters pass, Fail. Never met somebody who got Fail, so Masters pass is the true fail grade. No idea how they score them. Link to old prelims: The Prelim Archive Field exams: Two required. June after second year, August after second year, June third year... etc

Few TMers should sign this thing- most are attending grad programs that would not place students in a heterodox program. If Notre Dame stays heterodox, then that will take away a couple of possible placements every year! (And I say this knowing that two Minnesota students had flyouts to Notre Dame... that would not have happened without the rift in ND's dept!)

In hindsight, I would have gone with the following combo: 1. Fast desktop for home to do more intense computational stuff. 2. Cheap laptop for doing presentations and screwing around. You could do this on less than $2000 for sure.

This is not true. I think most people would consider Minnesota amongst the freshest of the fresh water schools, but we see sticky price models briefly in first year macro and sticky price DSGE somewhat extensively in the second year trade sequence. Also, only those who take Warren Weber's mini of monetary economics really see monetary search here, from what I gather (I didn't take that field...)

I don't think we have been placing very well in micro theory, but we also had very few theorists (under the age of 70) up until this year- last year only beth allen and aldo rustichini. However, we got two young senior theorists this year- Kim Sau Chung and Ichiro Obara. We also got two junior theorists-itai sher and david rahman. I don't know how these guys will translate into creating students, but there are at least more options in the field now. All this said, I have no idea what the comparison should be between Penn State and here since this is not my field at all.

Regarding the TA duties for first years here: I was a TA last year. My experience is typical- I spent on average 8 hours a week (adding up 2 hrs spent lecturing, 2 hrs in my office hours, 1 hour attending lecture, and then 2 hours grading, and 1 hour in prep (although this isn't smoothed over the entire year of course)). I never felt like TA'ing was hurting my chances in class. Regarding the choice between here and WUSTL: This is hard to say, but I can't imagine that WUSTL's current rise will translate into better job placement by the time that you are on the job market. Our star students are placed very strongly and the median student gets academic or FED placement at masters or PhD granting schools on a regular basis. Finally, congratulations and feel free to PM me if you have any questions about the first and second years.

OSU is clearly a better program overall, and they have had at least one top graduate recently (see Virgiliu Midrigan - Department of Economics - Ohio State University).

So this may shock people, but we actually do learn sticky price models here. Given, we learn them via Pat Kehoe's papers (critiques), but I am pretty comfortable working out the models. I understand less how they are calibrated (or whatever they do to take them to data).

We had a lot of students on the market this year (23...), so I don't know very many, but the academic placements that I know of are: Columbia (econ), Carnegie Mellon, Toronto, Arizona State, and Washington State

Thanks Weary. I'm trying to take a peek at the literature, but I didn't know who to read beyond Blanchard, Woodford and Gali...

Who are they?

I don't know how the finance dept is here at Minnesota, but the finance students do take a lot of econ courses. We had a number of them take our core micro and macro, and one guy is taking the entire 2nd year international sequence as well as the second year financial economics sequence. He is essentially an econ phd student and doesn't have to take the prelims!

Congrats to everyone! I can attest that Minnesota is (on net) a really great place for grad school (and such nice weather!) If anybody has any questions about the program, I'm almost through field courses so I can give some insight on the first two years. Hope to see you all at the recruitment weekend (I'll be driving people around the Cities).

At Minnesota, first years are either graders or TA's. As a TA, you have two sections of 35 students for which you hold recitation once per week, one hour each section. Two hours per week of office hours are required to be scheduled, although I almost never had anybody come to mine. Most people are originally scheduled to do summer TAing as well, but 6 of us had it turn into fellowships due to lack of enrollment. Second year and beyond (if we don't get a research assistant position), we teach courses- make lectures, homeworks, tests, some get to choose their books. This year I am teaching the introductory macroeconomics, once per week, 2.5 hours with 2 office hours during the week. This is a much larger time commitment than during the first year, but since I don't have to study for core prelims anymore I have some extra time anyway.

It is insane that they expect you guys to teach 3 sections! I teach one section (2.5 hours a week) of intro to macro, and that takes an entire day away from my own stuff. I did a TA last year, and that was two sections, but still...

Wait... how many classes are you teaching? Do you mean 4-5 times per week (which is still too much)? Surely it can't be 4-5 SECTIONS?

This was our Final for the first half of the first semester last year here at Minnesota. http://www.econ.umn.edu/%7Ecslavik/teaching/final.pdf Question 1 is essentially the proof of existence and uniqueness of the value function in SLP chapter 4 (or is that in 3? I can't remember right now) Next look at question II.1 from this Fall's macro prelim: http://www.econ.umn.edu/prelims/f07/f07-macro.pdf and compare it to chapter 6 in SLP (the first part on global stability). In short, if you come here, be prepared for chapters 1-6 in about 8 weeks. The second half of the first semester still uses it a lot too, but that mini is a bit of a blur for most people.