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PHD in Econ; Thoughts?

averagelatency

Joined
10/18/11
Messages
4
Points
11
Can anyone vouch for the relevancy of a PHD in Econ from a top 10 school in the Quant Recruitment process? I've been looking at potential/available jobs online and many of them list a PHD in Econ as a possible applicant degree. I have a proclivity for Econ as opposed to finance, so I was just looking for some opinions. Anyone disagree?

By the way, I'm a new member and excited to contribute to this board, not just some ***hole looking for information and then bouncing permanently.
 
Andy Nguyen said:
Welcome to Quantnet.
Do you already have an Econ PhD or are asking if you should do one for job purpose? If the latter, the general advice is no.
If the former, can you code?
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Thank you so much for the prompt reply! And I'm a senior with a passion for Econ so no not yet. Would hedge funds look for Econ phds for research/strategy positions?
 
averagelatency said:
Thank you so much for the prompt reply! And I'm a senior with a passion for Econ so no not yet. Would hedge funds look for Econ phds for research/strategy positions?
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maybe, but by the time you are done with the PhD, things could be a lot different.
 
And you've targeted the core of my worries and the reason for which I post on this awesome board: I'm extremely worried that by the time I finish my PHD, an algorithm or c++ program will do m job for me, or the field of research economics won't hold the relevance it does todAy (if it even has any today). Advice guys? I legit hate to ask but I'm sweating bullets..
 
There are many research areas in Economics: Financial Economics, Econometrics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Industrial Organization, Game Theory. If you do your dissertation in Finanial Economics or Econometrics from a Top 10 school, and read hundreds of Finance journal articles, then you can try for a job in HF in Stat Arb / Fundamental Research / Quant Strategies. Depends on your knowledge level and performance in the interviews.
 
TraderJoe said:
There are many research areas in Economics: Financial Economics, Econometrics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Industrial Organization, Game Theory. If you do your dissertation in Finanial Economics or Econometrics from a Top 10 school, and read hundreds of Finance journal articles, then you can try for a job in HF in Stat Arb / Fundamental Research / Quant Strategies. Depends on your knowledge level and performance in the interviews.
Click to expand...


It's so amazing to hear someone say it. That was the plan I formed in my head (in a perfect world of course). I was planning on stat. Arb. As it stands now, I read finance/Econ journals every day for fun, and have gone through a lot of Max Damas stuff from berkely. I thoroughly enjoy it! Especially game theory.
 
It is best to stick to Financial Economics or Econometrics. Game Theory is extremely difficult, especially when you get into modeling multi-player games with bounded rationality and incomplete information. You can see what happened to Nash and Harsanyi, even though they won Nobel prize for their work.
 
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