Mobius Striptease Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i said it. i knew a whole buncha econ zombies will > pop out trying to convince the world how insanely > quantitative economics is, and i’m surprised only > two voiced their opinion yet. you think every econ > phd does advanced econometrics? you can focus on > government policy and regulation, internation > trade, and a whole buncha macro issues that dont > require any quantitative knowledge. you think > adding 3 more variables to your regression makes > you quantiative? econ professors can get by > without knowing any math depenidng on the focus of > their research, and a lot of them do. you guys are > clueless Mobius, I typically agree with you but I can’t agree with you this time. In my school first year PhD students in Economics have to take Price Theory, Econometrics and Macroeconomics. I only took the Price Theory series (I, II and III). Price Theory I was primarily conceptual and I felt very fortunate to learn the foundations of Microeconomics from Becker and Murphy. Even though mathematical models were used extensively, they really tried to help develop intuition behind the models. Price Theory III was primarily math (game theory, constrained optimization for moral hazard problems, working with conditional probabilities, etc). Price Theory II was also very mathematical (existence of walrasian equilibrium //proof stolen from Nash in game theory//, lots of work with preferences, existence of corresponding utility functions, support functions, etc). I can give you a few problem that you would enjoy working on. For example, give me an example of locally non-satiated continuous convex preferences that can’t be represented by a concave utility function. Even though most PhDs in Econ don’t work in the area of Econometrics and yet they do go through pretty rigorous mathematical training.
I think you need to clarify what constitutes “rigorous mathematical training”. Take for instance this passage that describes Harvard’s economics graduate program entry requirements. (Presumably, most people consider Harvard to have a competitive economics graduate school.) “Mathematics Requirement Students are expected to have a strong back ground in linear algebra and calculus upon entering the program; knowledge of differential equations, real analysis, probability, and statistics is also very helpful.” Depending on who you are, this describes either a rigorous mathematical background or freshman-level math.
Real analysis is only freshmen-level math if you don’t know what real analysis is. And anybody who has not taken graduate level econ courses cannot give anyone shit about difficult the math is. “I have ten Phd’s from MIT.” Shut up.
joemontana Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sublimity: > > Wow, that came off meaner than I intended. I just > wanted to remind the OP that a PhD and great > skills doesn’t guarantee a job. > > sorry I have been actively interviewing for 2-3 months and have recently graduated within the past month. I have made it to onsite interviews at 3 places. I consider it a medium victory to even get a call back, and a major victory to get past the phone screen to the onsite interview. gauri has been searching since last August, and just landed a quant position at a bulge bracket. I don’t think I’m more qualified than him, most likely less qualified actually, so I expect my hunt to be comparable or even worse. Practically, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. on the resume is almost mandatory for hiring managers at most firms to even look at your resume for more than 2 seconds, let alone give you the very first interview. C++ skills are extremely important if you want to remain competitive after that, for most roles. Think of it as extremely hard, now double it, and that’s how hard it will be to land a quant position.
Also, most quant positions these days are glorified programming positions. Forget the ideal of “quant finance,” you will most likely be an entry level code monkey, but with a phd, with a marginally larger salary compared to someone with an MS.
sublimity Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Also, most quant positions these days are > glorified programming positions. > > Forget the ideal of “quant finance,” you will most > likely be an entry level code monkey, but with a > phd, with a marginally larger salary compared to > someone with an MS. Quant is an overused term, agreed, but there is a lot of quant finance out there.