For me, it was a great idea. Your mileage may vary.
On his Substack yesterday, Arnold Kling posted yesterday about the pitfalls of going to graduate school in economics. It’s titled, appropriately, given the content, “Beware of Econ Grad School.”
Arnold lists 3 possible motives for getting a Ph.D. in economics.
Intellectual Curiosity. You like to explore ideas, you want to better understand how the economy works, and you want to come up with answers to puzzles and problems in the field of economics.
Lifestyle. You want to produce economics papers, you want autonomy, and you want your only professional interactions to be with other economics professors.
Other. For example, you may want a career in the field of policy-making in economics. (bold in original)
If someone had shown me those 3 motives when I was considering graduate school, and if I were convinced that those were the only possible motives, I would have decided not to get a Ph.D.
Let’s consider them one by one.
Intellectual curiosity. Of the three, this comes closest for me, although it’s not very close. I did like the idea of exploring ideas and better understanding how the economy works. But I didn’t think I had the ability to come up with answers to puzzle and problems. The understanding was enough for me, and UCLA delivered in spades. Indeed, it was only while I was at UCLA, studying under Armen Alchian, Sam Peltzman, Ben Klein, Harold Demsetz, Jack Hirshleifer, and George Hilton, and TAing for Chuck Baird, that I started thinking about puzzles and problems more deeply than I expected to do when I applied. I learned things that I had never puzzled about, especially from Alchian and Klein, such as why various activities of firms that are a puzzle to someone schooled only in perfect competition, are consistent with competition, broadly understood. That was all a bonus. And Hirshleifer, Demsetz, Peltzman, and Hilton got me thinking about things I had never thought about. Finally, TAing for Chuck Baird’s undergrad intro course in macroeconomics taught me a ton of macro. All of this learning was a bonus compared to what I had expected.
Lifestyle. I had no desire at first to produce economics papers. I started wanting to do so at my first job, at the University of Rochester’s Graduate School of Management (now the Simon School) from 1975 to 1979. That was something that developed as I read the academic literature and spotted holes and also read the popular economics literature and came to different conclusions than the ones I was reading, written by even the great Milton Friedman. I did want and have always wanted autonomy. But I never wanted my only professional interactions to be with other economics professors. I had good professional interactions with students, especially graduate students. And I interacted professionally with non-professors when, at age 28, I testified twice before Congressional committees, once before the House Ways and Means Committee on a piece I had written after noting a mistake in Milton Friedman’s Newsweek column (and the late Lindley Clark wrote a whole column about my testimony in the Wall Street Journal) and once before the Senate Armed Services Committee. I also started doing media work on local TV and radio shows in Rochester. I came on as a professional economist but, of course, was not interacting with professional economists.
Other. I never wanted a career in the field of policy-making, but I did want a taste of it and had a taste of it, first for 6 months at the Labor Department and then for 2 years at the Council of Economic Advisers. When I told Milton Friedman, who called himself my “Dutch uncle,” that I had a chance to be in the Reagan administration, he told me to take it and go for only 2 years. I went for 2.5 years, which means I followed his advice in spirit.
What’s Left Out?
Arnold left out 3 major things that I can think of: (1) teaching, (2) the think tank world, and (3) consulting. I’ve done all three and enjoyed them, but the one I enjoyed most was teaching.
When I started graduate school, I was 21. I didn’t know enough, and didn’t think long-term enough, to know what I wanted out of it or where it would lead. But it was a great step. I admit that one motive I had for finishing my Ph.D., a motive that wouldn’t apply to most readers, is that by doing so, I would have a much better chance of getting a green card.
As I see it, there are two main strategies for the kind of graduate school to go to. The first is to go to the highest-ranked school you can get into, realize that you won’t learn much economics and won’t find much of what you learn interesting, hold your nose for 4 years, and then get a job with the kind of school that fits you. Former co-blogger Bryan Caplan did this at Princeton and then got a great job at George Mason University. The second is to go to a school such as George Mason University, where you’ll learn a lot of economics but won’t get as many good opportunities on the job market. Even there, though, the opportunities can be good. I’m reminded of that fact every year when I go to the annual meetings of the Association for Private Enterprise Education and meet at least 10 young interesting economists whom I hadn’t heard of or knew only a little about, at least 5 of whom got their Ph.D.s at GMU.
The bottom line is that when you decide whether to get a Ph.D. in economics, think, as well as you can, about who you are, what your interests and abilities are, and what kind of job you want. All of these are hard to figure when you’re young. But don’t restrict yourself, as Arnold Kling did, to a subset of possible motives.
Note: The pic above is of Armen Alchian, who taught me more economics than any other economist. A lot of my UCLA professors, though, taught me almost as much.
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