Dismal Scientists: How The Crash Is Reshaping Economics
I have been considering pursuing a phd in behavioral economics or psychology. This article sheds some light on the salaries of econ phds.
Click Here To Read About The Upcoming Changes In Economics
Article Introduction (Via The Atlantic)
With the chattering classes consumed by concern for the devastated value of their 401K funds, and their suddenly precarious lifestyles, there has been much anger and scorn directed at those former masters of the universe, financiers. But the shock to the world of finance has been echoed by a shock to the world of academic economics that is just as profound. In the long post WWII boom, as free market ideology triumphed, economists have won for themselves a privileged place inside academia.
First there is the cash. It astonished some when Washington University, a school with an economics department of modest prestige, hired economists David Levine and Michele Boldrin by offering salaries well in excess of $500,000. But most high ranked economics departments have professors earning in excess of $300,000. Not much by the pornographic standards of finance, but a fat paycheck compared to your average English or Physics professor.
Additional Article Excerpts (Via The Atlantic)
” Journeyman assistant professors in economics routinely come in at $100,000 or more. And, unlike the hard sciences, they do this fresh from their PhDs, without a publication to their name and without years of low pay as post-docs.”
“Why did academic economics generate so much prestige? Sure, modern economics is technically demanding. But so, for example, are theoretical physics and archeology, and physics and archeology professors are (relatively) dirt poor.”
“It has seen Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, guided by Larry Summers, one of the most respected economists of our time, produce a bailout plan for the US financial system stunning in its faltering vagueness.
“Bizarrely, suddenly everyone is interested in economics, but most academic economists are ill-equipped to address these issues.”
