Yale will have to soon do it due to lack of macro faculty, not just due to lack of student interest…
What's going on at Yale?
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Yale definitely has converged to being like other top departments. As has been pointed out, poor junior hiring is one reason. Another is being exceptionally weak in macro, where traditionally they had great success in placements with Engel’s students. And then if current seniors are not as dedicated to advising as those before, it explains a lot.
Yale simply needs to commit to macro. Something like 1/4 of their students do macro and from a faculty perspective it is neglected in hiring. GM is great but he’s literally it for serious advising there at this point for most macro fields. FZ/MP have the growth students but there’s a lot of crowding in that relatively small field. It’s not a winning strategy
I agree. Macro is the largest subfield in econ. Just doesn't make sense for a top program to not have much coverage in it.
I wish some top department would have the courage to say out loud what most of us have realized for a long time. "Macro" is a dead field and deserves to be buried. Some of what macro should do should survive. Keep it but call it "monetary economics" or something. Forbid any current "macro economist" from being involved with it. The rest:
-- "Macro labor:" bad search theory and bad labor
-- "Family macro:" bad economic demography
-- "Macro of firms:" bad IO
-- "Growth:" bad economic history
-- "Dynamic public finance:" bad theory, bad public financeSuch a foolish post. Goes to show the quality of EJMR when idiotic takes like this are upvoted.
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Yale definitely has converged to being like other top departments. As has been pointed out, poor junior hiring is one reason. Another is being exceptionally weak in macro, where traditionally they had great success in placements with Engel’s students. And then if current seniors are not as dedicated to advising as those before, it explains a lot.
Yale simply needs to commit to macro. Something like 1/4 of their students do macro and from a faculty perspective it is neglected in hiring. GM is great but he’s literally it for serious advising there at this point for most macro fields. FZ/MP have the growth students but there’s a lot of crowding in that relatively small field. It’s not a winning strategy
I agree. Macro is the largest subfield in econ. Just doesn't make sense for a top program to not have much coverage in it.
I wish some top department would have the courage to say out loud what most of us have realized for a long time. "Macro" is a dead field and deserves to be buried. Some of what macro should do should survive. Keep it but call it "monetary economics" or something. Forbid any current "macro economist" from being involved with it. The rest:
-- "Macro labor:" bad search theory and bad labor
-- "Family macro:" bad economic demography
-- "Macro of firms:" bad IO
-- "Growth:" bad economic history
-- "Dynamic public finance:" bad theory, bad public financeFunnily enough the one field of Macro that I find absolutely terrible is the one with all the "monetary economics" bits. The fields you listed are probably the most important in all of economics.
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Yale definitely has converged to being like other top departments. As has been pointed out, poor junior hiring is one reason. Another is being exceptionally weak in macro, where traditionally they had great success in placements with Engel’s students. And then if current seniors are not as dedicated to advising as those before, it explains a lot.
Yale simply needs to commit to macro. Something like 1/4 of their students do macro and from a faculty perspective it is neglected in hiring. GM is great but he’s literally it for serious advising there at this point for most macro fields. FZ/MP have the growth students but there’s a lot of crowding in that relatively small field. It’s not a winning strategy
I agree. Macro is the largest subfield in econ. Just doesn't make sense for a top program to not have much coverage in it.
I wish some top department would have the courage to say out loud what most of us have realized for a long time. "Macro" is a dead field and deserves to be buried. Some of what macro should do should survive. Keep it but call it "monetary economics" or something. Forbid any current "macro economist" from being involved with it. The rest:
-- "Macro labor:" bad search theory and bad labor
-- "Family macro:" bad economic demography
-- "Macro of firms:" bad IO
-- "Growth:" bad economic history
-- "Dynamic public finance:" bad theory, bad public financeShu t up and sw@)llow d!mwit
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Yale had had a reputation for training their PhD students well and for having a high median placement with one or two stars every year. Their placement has not been good the past couple of years. Any insider on what's going on?
Next placement will also be awful---watch out!
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I wish some top department would have the courage to say out loud what most of us have realized for a long time. "Macro" is a dead field and deserves to be buried. Some of what macro should do should survive. Keep it but call it "monetary economics" or something. Forbid any current "macro economist" from being involved with it. The rest:
-- "Macro labor:" bad search theory and bad labor
-- "Family macro:" bad economic demography
-- "Macro of firms:" bad IO
-- "Growth:" bad economic history
-- "Dynamic public finance:" bad theory, bad public financeShu t up and sw@)llow d!mwit
This reply is so typical of macro -- disagrees so calls someone ghey and stupid
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Recent former Phd and couldn't agree more. Would have been much better if I chose other supposedly similar schools...
How come?
The place is going downhill. There is a noticeable malaise among most students and faculty. AVOID at all costs.
Recent PhD. This is true.
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as a (not so) recent grad, I felt that Yale was living in a parallel world to the other departments, in particular the more recent students (seemed to be intensifying 4-5 years ago). Such particular choices of research topics/approaches - the hard on for methodology in IO, Geography/Spatial/tax in "macro", the structural bent in labor and Dev.
Doubling down on theory/methodological hires has not helped this AT ALL. Translates into students' works. Those tools are not as valued in the academic market as they were 10 years ago, not valued at all for non-academic/quasi-academic research roles.tl;dr. all-in bet gone wrong. Maybe yale liked itself too much 10 years ago when they had a number of very successful candidates in different groups. Mean-reverted and took too long to realize it.
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structural, IO, and labor extremely popular in industry and government. I don’t think that’s where Yale wants to place people though. All we do in my agency is interview structural people.
as a (not so) recent grad, I felt that Yale was living in a parallel world to the other departments, in particular the more recent students (seemed to be intensifying 4-5 years ago). Such particular choices of research topics/approaches - the hard on for methodology in IO, Geography/Spatial/tax in "macro", the structural bent in labor and Dev.
Doubling down on theory/methodological hires has not helped this AT ALL. Translates into students' works. Those tools are not as valued in the academic market as they were 10 years ago, not valued at all for non-academic/quasi-academic research roles.
tl;dr. all-in bet gone wrong. Maybe yale liked itself too much 10 years ago when they had a number of very successful candidates in different groups. Mean-reverted and took too long to realize it.