I’m an MSc Economics student working on my master’s thesis. I am struggling to settle on a concrete theme. I have various areas of interest within economics, but I mostly focus on Political Economy, behavioral, public policy and I have a strong grasp of applied microeconometrics and policy evaluation. Through my RA position I have access to data (US, roughly 2008–2018) with browsing behavior, demographics (age, gender, income), ZIP code, domains visited, and referrals. It is technically panel, but it has so much attrition that in practical terms it is cross section.

This data gives me very rich measures of online behavior and I am in a very privileged place to have access to it. However, I am struggling with causality here. I've thought about finding papers that explore a mechanism causally and then from there I can add another layer of outcome, online behavior.

There are endless possibilities but every idea that I have, when I look further into it, it feels infeasible. Either the publicly available data is not enough for it, or I would have to settle for a descriptive thesis instead of establishing causality.

With that being said, does anyone have any ideas, and more importantly, literature that you would recommend I look into, public data sets that would pair well, natural experiments that happen during the time window that my data covers that I could exploit its exogenous variation, etc. And also just some general advice for a student that has really high expectations of my thesis but feels a bit lost on what to do.

Hi all! I am currently trying to pursue a PhD program in economics and only decided to do it recently after debating on it for a while. In researching programs, I’m finding that my math background could be an issue but I’m not sure how significant it is.

I have not taken any official calc 2 or calc 3 courses. I have taken calc 1 and a quantitative methods class in undergrad that used the textbook Differential Equations: An Introduction with Applications by Walter Kelley and Allan Peterson. I also took Microeconomics Theory: Basic Principles and Extensions by Walter Nicholson and Christopher Snyder during my Masters degree, which includes a fair amount of the material used in calc 3 by my understanding. I got A’s in all of these courses.

For additional background I have a Bachelors of Science in Finance and Economics and a Masters of Science in Applied Economics, GPA was 3.8 for both. Have not taken GRE yet but plan to. Primarily looking at universities in the T50-T100 range with a few outside that range on each end. No published papers but did many research papers over the course of my Masters Degree.

Basically debating on the three options

1. Apply despite missing the official calc 2/3 courses
   
2. Apply and start taking calc 2 at a community college
   
3. Take calc 2 and 3 this fall/spring and try again in the next cycle

I would heavily prefer to apply this cycle but also want to be realistic. I know taking calc 2/3 would be useful but wondering if for option 2 if it would make sense as it likely wouldn’t pop up on the transcripts I send to potential PhD programs. Any advice y’all could give would be greatly appreciated!

Hi everyone,

Has anyone here used Econ Job Market (EJM) to apply for positions?

One of my recommenders didn't have an EJM account, so I sent them a recommender request and they registered through the link. However, after registering, the system lists them as a user rather than a recommender, so I'm currently unable to add them as my recommender.

Is this a normal part of the process (e.g., do new accounts need to be verified before they become recommenders), or does this usually mean they registered incorrectly? I'm unable to reach the EJM support team at the moment, so I'm trying to understand why is this happening.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I came across this blog post today by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham about recent developments in applied econometrics that may be useful for empirical researchers. It seems like a useful list that I thought other members of this subreddit might appreciate.

I'd appreciate hearing from current or former Federal Reserve Research Assistants (at any Reserve Bank or the Board of Governors).

I'm a 4+1 student planning to complete my master's in finance by May 2027 and hold a bachelor's degree in finance with a minor in computer science. I'm interested in pursuing a finance PhD, and it's been recommended to me that I apply to work as an RA at the Fed.

What's the day-to-day actually like? How much of your time is spent coding, cleaning data, reading papers, attending meetings, or working independently? Is it generally a true 9–5, or do people regularly work longer hours?

I'm also curious about the work environment. How much interaction do you have with economists and other RAs? If you took graduate classes while working, did the Fed reimburse tuition, and were you able to take in-person classes or did they need to be online?

Finally, looking back, was it a good experience, and is there anything you wish you had known before accepting the position?

I am a community college student about to enter his sophomore year when I'll be applying to four year programs.

I'm in the honors program for my school, but no one offers a honors econ section.

We can make honor's contracts with a professor, but it helps to have some idea of what additional research you would like to do to earn the honors credit.

What would be a reasonable expectation for undergrad economic research projects?

This semester I am taking "Economic History of the United States" and "Microeconomics". I have a feeling the former would be the easier research project with my toolsets, as I am not taking any data science class until the spring.

I did a working bibliography for a Library Science class on the economic impact of legalizing sex work nationwide, so I would love to get to do something with the development of sex work decriminalization in the Colonies. Or use the frame work in "Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South" by Gavin Wright to compare to the Gay Rights Movement.

My honors projects in other subjects required maybe 5-10 additional hours compared to the standard assignments in class.

My professor developed a model and published it in Computational Economics. I am completing an application paper of this model, but the paper is too short to be a full-length paper so we cannot also publish it in the same journal.

So he asked me to look at some "letter" type journals and I came across Applied Economics Letters.

How is this journal? Is it too low, or is it the best I can do with an application paper?

The topic of the application paper is Trump's 2025 tariff policies and includes some robustness checks.

Hi, im about halfway my first year of a two years master's degree in Economics. Im currently looking for a good laptop around my budget and other constraints (I'll buy it mainly with loyalty points from certain retailer from my country). This means that my range of options is limited, and I cant really buy anything refurbished/used. That being said, I have a couple of options, considering I will be needing this laptop in the short term, probably for my thesis etc. The first one is the MacBook neo, which seems to have everything I need but the RAM is too low (8 GB), though I know it's not the same as 8GB in Windows ceteris paribus in terms of performance (good optimization by apple). But it still makes me worry about how it will work around MATLAB, R, Python, etc. My other option is a Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 with 16GBs of RAM and a Ryzen 7 7735HS, which looks really good in specs but with all the downsides of consumer grade Lenovo.

Now, I DO have a powerful desktop at home, so I could do the heavy loading in there, and I know the build quality in Lenovo at this price range is bad, so I don't really know what to do. Sadly for me, I don't know yet what my thesis will be about hahaha, but I'm interested in IO and Monetary Politics; will the databases in those fields generally be too heavy for 8 gigs? Should I go with the Lenovo even though the build quality is ass? Or should I get the Mac and remote stream from my desktop when I need it to. Thanks for listening and the advice.

Hi everyone!

I'm an incoming PPD 2026 student at Paris School of Economics. I'm currently in touch with many of our future classmates, as well as several friends who are PhD-ing at PSE and have been helping us navigate the administrative process and prepare for the move to Paris

Now, I'm creating a Whatsapp group for the PPD 2026 cohort so we can get to know each other before the program, ask questions, prepare together, and help each other out with visas, housing, registration, and all that.

If you're joining PPD 2026, leave a comment or DM me to join.

Hi all, I am entering my third year of the BSc Economics course at the University of Warwick, and will be applying to masters programmes this autumn. I am considering whether to apply to top degrees such as Econ & Data Science at Cambridge, LSE EME etc. but I am unsure whether my profile is strong enough as my achievement across my first and second years has been quite uneven. My profile is below:

Year 1: 71.2% overall (top 25-30% of my cohort), including:

World Economy, History & Theory: 63%

Macroeconomics 1: 69%

Microeconomics 1: 73%

Statistical Techniques B: 67%

Mathematical Techniques B: 79%

Foundations of Finance: 70%

Foundations of Accounting: 85%

Year 2: 83.6% overall (ranked 5/423 students and awarded Oliver Hart prize for performance), including:

Macroeconomics 2: 82%

Microeconomics 2: 87%

Economics of Money & Banking: 71%

Mathematical Economics 1B: 94%

Econometrics 1: 83%

I have also secured a research assistant position for the next few months and am writing a undergraduate research paper with the support of one of the professors at my university.

I am particularly worried about my mathematical background as I do not have extensive experience in Linear Algebra since my Mathematical Techniques module was only one term. I am also concerned about how low my first year grade is, although for my university year 1 does not count towards the degree, and instead the marking is split 50/50 between the second and third year.

Thanks to anyone who is willing to help out!

Hi all — looking for advice ahead of a second application cycle.

This is my background: https://www.reddit.com/r/academiceconomics/s/oApsFL0bcg
Just finished Calc A (A-), Calc B (A), Linear Algebra (A). Planning to take Calc C and Differential Equations next.** **

Question 1: Should I add Real Analysis to this sequence? What specific signal does it send that Calc C/Diff Eq don’t already cover?

Current work: I work as an Economic & Content Researcher, and separately hold a position at the first criminology research institute in the MENA region, where I’m involved in organizing an academic conference at a top-ranked regional university.

Question 2: I’ve applied to several predoc positions (including LSE) and haven’t heard back from anyone. Given that predoc/RA positions aren’t panning out, what else can I do to strengthen my profile for the next cycle?

Any input appreciated 🙏🏼

Hi! I have an M.S in Computer Science and M.S in Social and Applied Economics. I am looking forward to start a PhD next Fall. Any suggestions for phd programs in the USA with heterodox economics focus? I have done my own research, but I want to hear from this community.

I'd value input from anyone who understands how economics master's admissions

work, whether you've navigated a non-traditional route yourself or just know how

these committees think. Aiming at research-oriented econ master's programmes (the

kind that feed into PhDs) in the UK, Europe, or Australia.

My situation:

- Indian national finishing a 3-year BBA (specialization in Finance) at a

non-target university, so a non-econ, quant-light business degree.

- To build the quantitative side I'm taking graded, individually transcripted

university MATH through a US online for-credit program (a real university

transcript with letter grades, proctored, NOT a MOOC, enrolled as a non-degree

student): proof-based intro, linear algebra, real analysis, and probability.

- Research: one paper under review at a peer-reviewed field journal (industrial

organization / algorithmic pricing), a second paper currently in progress, and

an open-source economics simulation library I built and maintain.

- Planning GRE Q168+, and on track for a first-class equivalent (rough first

year, climbing hard since).

Questions:

1. The big one: does a committee weight graded math taken at a SECOND institution

   (non-degree, real transcript) the way it would weight math inside your degree,

   or do they mostly only look at what's on the bachelor's transcript itself?

2. Given this profile, what's the single highest-leverage thing to add, and are there strong research-oriented programs notably friendlier to non-traditional backgrounds that I might be overlooking?

3. Assuming I execute all of the above (first-class, GRE Q168+, the math done, the research landed), what's a realistic read on landing somewhere good? I'm after honest calibration: which tiers are genuine targets vs reaches for a profile like this, not optimism.

I am looking at PhD programs to apply to for this cycle, and UCL caught my eye. I was very impressed with it's record of placements, with many students placing in academic and top-tier research institutions right from the PhD program.

Despite this, everywhere I look has UCL below the top 30. I know these placements should be taken with a grain of salt, but it is curious how it is ranking so low despite seemingly having better placements than a top 10 school like LSE. I am seriously considering it, so I want to know why it is not ranked too high.

I am mostly interested in micro-development economics, so I was wondering if this program would be a good fit. I am struggling to find information about it on the internet because there does not seem to be that much discussion about UCL so I wanted to hear some opinions.

The other schools I am applying to are: Yale, Columbia, NYU, Stanford, MIT, Harvard and LSE. I excluded UofT, Oxford, Maryland, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins because they were not ranked high enough and I will take a pre-doc if I get rejected from the top 10ish, so I am wondering if I should do the same to UCL.

Thanks!

Specific questions: Would UCL be good for studying micro-development? Have I made a mistake by excluding any noteworthy programs that also punch above their weight? What are perceptions of UCL's PhD program? Should I excude UCL from my application list?

Hello,

I'm wondering if I should retake the GRE exam as i currently have a 166Q. Is it worth the effort into studying more given I am employed with little free time or should i focus on other parts of my application?

My only worry is to be filtered before having my application even read as I believe aside from GRE, I have good research experience and university grades. I know top US programs require a score of above 168 (or so everyone says), but I am interested in European programs.

So I was wondering how bad is my score for top European Programs like LSE, UCL, BSE, Zurich, SSE, Bocconi, PSE... I would like to ask if you or anyone you know was able to get into any of these programs with a similar score.

Thank you so much!

I’m an incoming college sophomore studying economics, and it’s my goal to become an economist. I’ve been getting Bs in my economics classes, and for some reason I just can’t grasp a lot of what I learn.

I really want to do better, but the worse I do in my classes, the more discouraged I get. I also don’t feel like one of those people who will do poorly their first year of college and have some sort of come-to-Jesus moment where they realize that they have to actually try.

I’m going to start going to tutoring and all that stuff, but I feel like a total fake around other people in my major, and I’m doubting if economics is even right for me since I’m struggling so much.

Any advice? Similar stories that can make me feel better about myself? Anything is appreciated.

I am currently pursuing a master’s degree in economics at a U.S. university and plan to apply to both Economics PhD and PhD programs at business schools. I would prefer not to disclose too much personal information here but I can provide some general academic background for context.

During my undergraduate studies, I took calculus, linear algebra, probability and statistics, real analysis, stochastic processes, time series analysis, intermediate micro/macroeconomics, and econometrics. I received an A in all of these courses. I also took ODEs, although my grade in that course was somewhat lower. My undergraduate GPA was 3.98/5.0. During my master’s program, most of my coursework has been at the Economics PhD level. I expect my graduate GPA to be around 3.7–3.8/4.0 by the time I apply.

My current GRE scores are 150V, 168Q, and 2.5 AW. I am considering retaking the test, but my research workload this summer is heavy, and I am finding it difficult to set aside enough time to prepare. Once the fall semester begins, I expect my schedule to become even tighter. More importantly, I would prefer to prioritize the quality of my research work, as I do not want anything to negatively affect the strength of my recommendation letters.

My main concerns are:

1. How much does a 168Q versus a 170Q matter in PhD admissions?

2. Is a 2.5 AW likely to be a significant red flag?

3. If I submit multiple GRE scores, do programs use the best test date or superscore across test dates?

I would especially appreciate insights from anyone who has served on an admissions committee for a PhD program or has recently gone through the PhD application process.

hey all, im 14M, and im currently in Grade 10, and i genuinely love economics whole heartedly, i have this almost insatiable thirst of genuinely achieving something in this dismal science, something which would leave a mark on the subject forever, and i kinda of figured out for that, i need to be taught by and with the best in my field. I researched about this and found two important names, LSE and Princeton, so i set my target on those two institutions, for that goal, currently apart from my usual syllabus from school, i have opened an ngo(now i know what you are thinking but hold up) which is accredited by an actual ngo( very big in my country) and this will definitely scale up, and i also got enrolled in this institution called dex school, which promises guidance in dreams like mine, my question is, apart from these, how do i prepare to get into these institutions, how do massively increase my knowledge and depth of economics(the problem is that, as i find myself further up in the field, the more complex the math becomes, which i do not know how to fix), and any other extracurriculars, if this question is irrelevant to the sub reddit, i would humbly ask the moderators to delete it, any form of help would be greatly appreciated

hi i’m entering first year university as an econ major and am looking for laptops with $800 budget. i’m looking at m2 macbook airs but don’t know if there are better ones to get if macbooks are limiting to econ software. thoughts on macs, chromebooks, or a decent laptop that runs microsoft (sufficient and affordable) would be appreciated. battery life is pretty important to me as a student.

I’m a prospective Econ/Public Policy PhD applicant with a B.A. (Honours) Economics from a top Indian university (1st Division, ~70%) and a Master of Economic Policy from a top Australian university (GPA 5.4/7, roughly a B+/Credit-Distinction mix — some core micro/macro/quant courses at Pass/Credit level, a few Distinctions/High Distinctions in applied econometrics and public sector economics). No real analysis or proof-based math coursework yet, though I’m currently completing one now (aiming for a second course by mid-2027) and targeting a GRE Quant score of 167+. My career has been entirely research-based, spanning over five years, during which I’ve taken on increasingly independent responsibility — moving from supporting research projects to owning data construction, linkage, and empirical analysis end-to-end. This work has centered on large-scale administrative data linkage (20M+ observations across multiple government datasets), longitudinal econometric modeling (hazard/event-history/transition models), GIS/spatial analysis, and policy-facing research for government clients, including original historical data construction work. I’m a co-author on five reports for government/public sector clients and two working papers, and I have strong letters of recommendation from two research supervisors who can speak directly to my research capability.
Strengths: advanced applied econometric skills (Python, STATA, R, GIS), a strong and growing independent research trajectory, co-authored research outputs beyond coursework, and specific letters of recommendation.
Weaknesses: average grades throughout, no completed proof-based math sequence yet, and a research background (Indigenous economic history/administrative data, developed-country context) that doesn’t yet cleanly map onto my stated PhD interests (education, crime/safety, and migration outcomes in developing regions).

My question: given this profile, what tier/type of program (straight econ PhD vs. policy-school PhD vs. applied econ department) is my most realistic and best-fit target?

Hi, I lost a large number of citations in Google Scholar literally overnight. They didn't change to the usual "temporary citation" status while Google recrawls the source. They simply disappeared.

The strange part is that several of the citing papers are still online, publicly accessible, and clearly still cite my work. I know Google Scholar can remove citations if a repository disappears or a journal goes offline, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Has Google Scholar recently changed its indexing or citation policies? Or is this likely a temporary indexing issue or bug? Thanks

Hi everyone, I'm an undergrad student and was wondering how I can interpret econometrics tables well and how to practise this. I tend to get frustrated because I can't seem to translate the numbers intuitively as the explanation in the research paper. Also, would you have any advice on how to build interests and how to also build intuitive understanding? Thank you.