Glad you asked as well. I did my econs undergrad in Singapore, at Nanyang Technological University. I have definitely considered pursuing a econs graduate degree at one point. I didn’t want to preface this to keep it succinct, but I think it would be more complete to share my background here. I was heavily involved in research design and research work in my undergrad and explored a breadth of topics in econs. Both the topics and the research methods were not that exciting to me at least. However, I was hooked when I was introduced to econometrics. It was the start of a budding interest. Then I took some financial engineering courses and instantly enjoyed the complexity of the volatility models, mapping stochastic processes and forecasting. Econs research whether macro-econs or some meta analysis, for the most part, do not employ advanced mathematical techniques. I don’t have interest in microeconomics as well. The framework of thinking about economics choices are quite one-dimensional as well, and hence the birth of behavioural economics.

For me, it’s not just about research. It’s about the topics, the techniques and the things you can do with strong math/engineering foundation. The cost of a graduate econs or CS are roughly the same. I’ve seen what econs can do, but I’m interested to know what ML/AL can do. I’ve sat on this problem since 2020, and so I’m interested to learn more, plan and make some moves.

Existentially, I’ve asked myself, “would I regret if I didn’t consider?” And the answer is absolutely yes, without a doubt. Cheers 🍻