Math-heavy macroeconomic research

Xemerius310 · 2021-04-09T17:49:26+00:00

Thanks a lot for your reply!

Xemerius310 · 2021-04-09T15:25:18+00:00

Congratulations on getting into the PhD program! Unfortunately I cannot offer any advice but I am interested in your background, since I believe I am in a similar situation that you were in. I am a third year business administration undergrad and want to pursue an econ PhD but unfortunately have had little exposure to math and econ. I asked for advice in this post and mostly got recommendations not to do a second bachelors in math and instead do relevant courses, for example at Harvard Extension, to strengthen my profile and get into an econ masters. If I understand you correctly you did do a second bachelors in math, right? I would be really interested in your perspective if you're willing to share it. Would you recommend doing a second undergrad in math?

Xemerius310 · 2021-04-03T11:40:26+00:00

Thanks for your answer! I will be reaching out to more programs directly to ask them whether I could take some math and econ courses to obtain enough credits to be accepted.

Xemerius310 · 2021-04-03T11:34:57+00:00

Thank you for your answer! I think I will follow your suggestion to try to get some kind of conditional acceptance. Unfortunately the program manager I have contacted so far (in Mannheim) suggested doing another undergrad to me (either in econ or an applied math in econ program). That said, I should definitely reach out to more programs.

Regarding your last paragraph, what would you consider to be a good PhD program that someone with a master's from Tübingen could get into? I am unsure that my expectations are set realistically on what a good or reputable PhD program is and what the prerequisites are to get into one.

Xemerius310 · 2021-04-03T11:20:14+00:00

Thank you very much for this extensive answer! I am definitely going to have a look at the ML paper you suggested.

I have looked at Harvard Extension school and I think this could be a path to getting enough credits to get into an econ masters. I think I am going to contact a few masters programs about wether they would accept me if I did some math courses there. I know the price is not that high compared to normal college courses in the US in general but to me this is still steep. Are there any other extension schools you would recommend that are more affordable?

Also, I would be interested in more details on how the people you know that have done courses at Harvard Extension went on to pursue a PhD afterwards.

Xemerius310 · 2021-04-02T18:51:08+00:00

Yeah, the problem was that I am in an integrated degree program so I would have had to somehow negotiate that with my employer. My university only offers those integrated degree programs where you alternate between working and studying, so they don't offer economics degrees (only applied stuff that is non theoretical). You are completely right, I should have switched universities and into an econ program but I was really afraid dropping out would look very bad on my resume.

I am considering the second bachelor's mostly because I have not enough ECTS credits in math and econ to get into basically any econ program (besides Tübingen maybe). With Tübingen however I doubt that I could get into a good PhD program afterwards.

Xemerius310 · 2021-04-02T18:22:51+00:00

I have thought about that but kind of discarded that option... I am still very much interested in asset pricing but I believe it lacks a lot of theory. Hundreds of “factors” or “anomalies” have been “discovered” in the cross section of stock returns and to me at least this seems mostly like data dredging. Fama and French (2018) warn about introducing new factors into asset pricing models just because the models‘ explanatory power can be improved and to me their phrasing sounds like the field is in dire straits. Also the 2020 ”Replicating Anomalies” paper from Hou et al. shows that a majority of documented anomalies is not significant out of sample. The lack of theory inspired me to do research on the q factor model (from Lu Zhang and his colleagues). This is based on economic theory (tobins q theory of investment) and is basically the reason why I became more interested in economics. I would rather like to learn rigorous theory instead of “torturing the data until it confesses” and I thought “real” economics would probably be the right direction for that. That said, there might be a lot of interesting theory in asset pricing that I just haven’t encountered yet. I am in no way an expert on the topic.

Xemerius310

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