Why?

An Economics PhD is considered by 80k hours as one of the most important things one can do, given certain attributes.

you have a high chance of landing a good research job in academia or policy – promising areas for social impact – and you have back-up options in the corporate sector since the skills you learn are in-demand (unlike many PhD programs).

What do you need?

  • 165+ GRE score; 160+ is still not good!
  • 3.5 GPA or higher especially in economics and mathematics degrees
  • Killer letters of recommendation from people known in the field

If you are not from Economics or a Mathematics UG, it is still possible to get a PhD from the US. Some advice is given here. The bottom line is that we need transition years to either do another masters followed by some research before applying or at least do a diploma (1-3) years transitioning for a 5-7 year economics PhD. Apparently this is the scene in Harvard even.

US PhD’s are the ones to aim for according to 80k hours. One of the reasons for going for a US PhD instead:

Funding for post-graduate study in the UK is highly uncertain at each stage even if you are really good.

Academia and real world

In case shit hits the roof, getting a job in the real world is apparently easy as evident by the statistics. This field has the least un-employment rates as compared to any other field

More than 50% go into academia with a decent median salary of 108k$.

Academic jobs: You can do research on high priority cause areas, like ending extreme poverty (see e.g. MITs Poverty Action Lab) or cause prioritization (e.g. in support of the work of the Copenhagen Consensus).

” Non-academic profiles jobs:

  • Government (e.g. Federal Reserve, Treasury, Department of Justice)
  • Non-profit research organizations and think-tanks (e.g. RAND, National Bureau of Economic Research)
  • International organizations (e.g. World Bank, International Monetary Fund)
  • Business/Industry (e.g. investment banking, economic consulting)”- 80k hours

TODO

  • Age to do a PhD?
  • How about a masters? How about the exploration value for that?
  • And opportunities to do direct work/ work in the industry?
  • What are the downsides of going in this path
  • Can you make it?
  • Still need to write about Skill, connections, credentials and runway
  • What about an economics master and then a PhD, do I have the time?

P.S total time spent 45-1 hr non continuous