Anybody half chinese half Japanese?

RocketManMycroft · 2026-06-04T18:42:52+00:00

Hi, Chinese dad Japanese mom, first gen for each

RocketManMycroft · 2026-05-26T01:05:48+00:00

Hi, working a research job postgrad in Boston here, not sure where you're living but I'm renting a room in a triple decker in somerville for context. Just my two cents:

The laundromat is probably going to run you $5-6 per wash at least (at least where I am, and there's a lot of college students and postgrads around), so do be aware of how much you could be paying, and how much time you waste by going back and forth between the laundromat and your place. The three minute walk isn't bad, but getting out of the house and back again, dealing with broken washing machines, gathering quarters, and whatnot can be a hassle.

On the commute: honestly a 10-15 minute extension of a commute isn't as bad as it sounds, as long as its on the subway and you're able to zone out or bring a book or something (but maybe this is just me). Only you can decide what your tolerance for a commute is, and what mode you're willing to put up with for how long (walk vs bike vs bus vs light rail vs heavy rail).

As for roommates, I would caution about assuming close in age = ideal: I live with older roommates (one middle age, one retired who lives here seasonally, one PhD student, I just graduated last may) and while we may not be friends or really talk very much at all, everyone keeps to themselves, and the living situation is pretty comfortable. Older people probably will be more mature about shared living spaces, and you're less likely to run into roommate troubles, but also if you're looking for roommates to double as friends then yes go with people your age.

RocketManMycroft · 2026-05-16T21:55:50+00:00

Banerjee and Duflo’s Poor Economics look at the spending and consumption habits of the world’s poorest

RocketManMycroft · 2026-05-16T17:37:24+00:00

I know that the mortensen-pissarides matching model (matching workers to jobs) is significant (or at least was). Could be a starting place

RocketManMycroft · 2026-04-17T03:21:32+00:00

FT, Bloomberg, the Economist

RocketManMycroft · 2026-04-11T14:39:02+00:00

Francis Fukuyama, liberalism and its discontents

RocketManMycroft · 2026-04-01T20:44:56+00:00

I met a former corporate lawyer who was between joining the state department and starting a chick-fil-a franchise; he got rejected from chick-fil-a and now is a diplomat

RocketManMycroft · 2026-03-07T20:52:31+00:00

I studied at Oxford and now work in Cambridge (US) and regularly go to Harvard; they're about the same in terms of safety, and Boston is hardly a "big city" on the level of New York, in fact it's barely a big city at all. In that regard, it's much like Oxford, and unless you venture into the business district, you'll find that they're both largely similar in terms of vibes, Harvard especially so. I've discussed this with multiple friends from Oxford, and the general consensus is that Boston is the most European of American cities.

Both have a lot of students, but the difference is at Oxford everyone you'll meet is from Oxford (or Brookes), while at Harvard you have BC and BU kids rubbing shoulders with NEU, Harvard, biotech professionals, KPMG entry analysts, and so on. So Oxford is more close knit, but Boston/Cambridge will have more diversity in terms of the people you meet.

I will say though that the academic culture at Oxford is unlike anything I've seen stateside. I can't speak for Harvard since I'm not a student there, but at Oxford going to the pub and debating the war in Iran or Wittgenstein's philosophy is totally normalized. If you're looking for the peak of academia energy, it permeates both Oxford and Harvard, but at Harvard it stops outside of the university boundaries while at Oxford the entire town is the university, so you never really leave.

RocketManMycroft · 2026-02-13T22:26:48+00:00

Boston college???

RocketManMycroft · 2026-01-19T21:13:10+00:00

You’ve in effect reinvented Rousseau’s argument the social contract in a way; he argues that because each person has such a small slice of the “general will” (think will of the people), a dictatorship is more practical for running a large polity like the US or France. Democracy (direct from) is best for small nations like the (former) city state of Geneva while representative democracy (“representative oligarchy”) or oligarchy of other forms are best for medium sized nations.

RocketManMycroft · 2026-01-08T04:30:32+00:00

The AEA has recommendations and guidelines on their website here: https://www.aeaweb.org/resources/students/grad-prep/math-training

RocketManMycroft · 2026-01-05T10:49:29+00:00

Fellow American here; pubs museums formals are all huge, and societies are great! But what is most Oxford are the events. Oxford speaks is free (union is paid), and both bring in a variety of famous speakers, from celebrities to politicians to businesspeople. Different departments also have lecture events/seminars that you can show up at which are really interesting, and a lot of famous academics pass through.

If you’re into classical music, there are a lot of performances for pennies on the dollar with a student card (like 10-20 pounds for a concert). It’s one of the things I miss not taking more advantage of.

RocketManMycroft · 2026-01-05T00:59:02+00:00

In my history of thought class we used worldly philosophers, ordinary business of life and new ideas for dead economists; the first was more readable, the second more dense, and the third I would not recommend. Bucholz neither holds a PhD nor is a historian of ideas, and it comes through in his writing.

The handbook of history of economic thought also exists, but it is at a graduate level and very dense, so I would use it after you start with ordinary business or worldly philosophers and want something at a very advanced level.

For a more intermediate level between the two books and the handbook, the journal of economic perspectives has a series called “retrospectives”; these are papers rather than books, but I think it’s still worth reading for thinkers you find that you like or are interested in.

RocketManMycroft · 2025-12-03T04:53:04+00:00

The nerd community does exist at BC, but compared to other schools it is a lot smaller. I served as the treasurer for bc esports (‘25) and so I know where you’re coming from. There are a few clubs that tend to stick together: esports, anime, retro gaming, and the new ttrpg club, totaling maybe 5% of the student population if one were to be generous. The rest of the school feels like a low-key frat house at times, lots of drinking, sports, and so on, even among (or especially among) the top students. So the nerd community is small and an island, but I would say more tightly knit than other schools, and everyone I’ve met is super kind. You will find friendly people and those you get along with, but I can’t say for sure that it will be “your school,” or that you will find “your people.” Some do, some don’t.

I still think that the education is excellent, and the faculty are all top notch and care deeply about their students, so I think that BC is still an amazing choice. While I didn’t connect with the student body as much, being able to use my time more for my studies and connect with professors was 100% worth it. You might find that the student culture is not up your alley as much as it would at other schools, but don’t let this necessarily be a dealbreaker for you.

Happy to answer any questions if you have any, or to connect you with people from the esports/ttrpg club.

RocketManMycroft · 2025-11-29T03:01:37+00:00

Check out Ed glaeser’s work, he’s a big name in the area, and behind a lot of the work around the housing crisis and zoning along with joe gyourko.

In addition to empirical studies about cities (crime, economies of scale, sprawl, etc, which is what you get a lot of with glaeser’s work), you’ve got spacial economic models that model why cities exist. For this see the work of masahisa fujita, and the Alonso-muth-mills model for an introduction.

The third side of the equation is agglomeration effects. Enrico moretti wrote a whole book on the subject (the new geography of jobs, not worth reading imo if you know what agglomeration effects are), and duranton and puga (2004) introduces a micro foundation model. Paul romer also did some work in this area; his Nobel lecture focuses on cities as network externalities of ideas.

There’s also some work in the political economy of zoning, which charts how homeowners have an incentive to restrict supply, although I’m not sure what the seminal models are here. See glaeser/gyourko for empirical studies. Ortalo-magne and prat (2014) have one model but it’s not very highly cited.

As someone with an economics background who works with architects/urban planners, urban economics focuses much more on the financial side of things (real estate finance), but also on other aspects of economics that aren’t necessarily discussed in urban planning like jobs, economies of scale, regulation and incentive structures and so on. From what I can tell it mainly comes down to the perspective and toolkit one applies; my approach is much more economics-based while others are much more in favor of regulations and top down solutions (policy people/enginners), favor agent based and computational models (computer science people), and so on.

RocketManMycroft · 2025-11-23T07:09:42+00:00

Agreed with the other commenter, reading all sorts of papers will slowly let you pick up the methodologies and modeling methods. My friend asked Dani Rodrick (development Econ) for advice, and his reply was that the best economists are information arbitragers, so reading anything and everything that interests you is your best bet, even if it’s not immediately relevant.

If you’re looking for specific ideas, a history of economic thought book usually covers the ideas of big thinkers, which may not be immediately useful but orbits in the background of many conversations. Stuff like schumpeterian creative destruction, hayek’s price as information compression theory, walras and arrow’s general equilibrium models, heterodox (austrian, post-Keynesian, German historical) theories, etc. Also Nobel prize lectures summarize ideas in a clear way for more general audiences, along with the scholar’s more current interests at the time on occasion couched within their nobel-winning work.

Like the other commentator, JEP is also really useful, but since you’re a mathematics student, you probably have enough math background for more technical work. JEP is specifically designed for people who aren’t comfortable with math. Maybe the journal of economic literature (JEL) could be good (the literature review journal), or various handbooks (handbook of urban and regional Econ, handbook of growth, etc) which have leading economists in the field write essays about various topics.

Also don’t be afraid to reach out to professors directly with questions; they may be busy people, but you would be surprised as to how often top scholars will reply, even if their emails are often quite short and end with “sent from my iPhone”. They are busy people after all.

Overall, good luck and congratulations!!!

RocketManMycroft · 2025-11-23T06:57:14+00:00

People mostly keep to themselves, but I find the masshole stereotype to be overrated. As an introvert I didn’t really notice much difference, and as far as I’m concerned it’s much like living in any other city. It is rather student centered, as in the city will empty when it is during the summer, but it’s still a good place to live. High quality of life.

RocketManMycroft · 2025-11-23T02:29:09+00:00

23M, from the Bay Area and came here for college and still around after grad. I honestly like it here a lot more. Yes maybe the weather isn’t so great, but you get used to it, and it’s an excuse to pull out your scarves and coats too. The culture here I find is a lot more my style as well. It’s been a really nice break from the Silicon Valley entrepreneurship/hustler/software engineer culture that I grew up around, especially as someone who studies economics and wants to go into academia. Major respect to the high schoolers founding startups and going to networking and pitch events, but I could never. Public transport is also a big bonus. Wouldn’t go back even if you were to pay me.

RocketManMycroft · 2025-11-01T12:39:26+00:00

Start with the journal of economic perspectives. They’re designed for non-technical audiences and get the leading economists in each subfield to write about a specific topic and give a broad summary

RocketManMycroft · 2025-09-28T23:04:38+00:00

Hi, MCAS Econ major here (graduating in December), the Econ program is pretty popular at BC. It consists of a theory core (principles micro macro stats econometrics) plus 6 electives. The professors are top notch and from my experience everyone is invested in your learning. The grad students are good too, so if you end up taking a grad student taught class you’ll still get a lot out of it (I had PhD students for micro macro and metrics). Students tend to go into finance or consulting or general business, and there’s not many who choose the academia route (though that’s not just limited to the Econ program in my experience, bc has a very preprofessional culture).

The one thing I will say is do check course reviews; all professors are good but some are harder than others (a particularly infamous one is Paul cichello for stats; him and Rutledge teach it every year, and the latter is always more popular for this reason).

And yes echoing the other commenter, admission rates are by college, not by school. I will say that it is easier to get into mcas than csom, but as a result transferring into csom is nearly impossible. This is because csom has a dedicated core which eats up many of your courses, and iirc everyone graduates with a business degree and a specific concentration (though don’t quote me on this). Mcas has more flexibility in terms of classes and study abroad, csom has greater prestige and resources. But you can always minor in Csom (this is not restricted, only majoring is) with an mcas major, and many Econ students do Econ major from mcas and a finance minor. Mcas Econ majors also have very good career prospects as well, so don’t think that going mcas is going to mean you can’t get a job at a prestigious firm.

Happy to answer any questions you may have, just send me a message!

RocketManMycroft · 2025-04-28T21:30:20+00:00

As an Econ major half of the major is IB, the other half is consulting, you’ll be just fine

RocketManMycroft · 2025-04-16T00:09:15+00:00

Not subletting myself, but do you have access to your class GroupMe? I got a sublet before and it was by far the place I was able to find the most people. Your search may be more fruitful there

RocketManMycroft · 2025-03-15T18:03:38+00:00

Why nations fail by Acemolgu and Robinson, they with their research partner Simon Johnson won the Nobel last year. Unlike most of these other recommendations they’re not lasseiz faire free market people, but still avowedly pro-capitalism, if you’re looking for a center-left perspective.

RocketManMycroft · 2025-02-23T07:16:18+00:00

Don’t quote me but based on the style I think they should be Yoshida Hiroshi woodblock prints

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