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30 sats \ 14 replies \ @Undisciplined 31 Jul \ parent \ on: 400 Ph.D. Economists vs. One Shiny Rock econ
It's not all that many. Less than one thousand per year, I think.
Ok, one thousand for the state? Do many of them go into the private sector?
One last question, how many of them are not hallucinating about economic theory and fact?
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I'm a little out of touch with how many go into the private sector, but it's a large share. I don't know that a majority go to any of academia, government, or private. Those are the big three, though.
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If they are going to the private sector, someone must see the value in hiring them! I just hope they are getting their DMVP out of them!
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There are tons of economists who do consulting work or work on projects for tech companies.
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Good to hear! Someone is finding them useful for something. How accurate are they? Are they being profitable for those companies? What schools are they coming from?
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Yes, despite your disapproval, the kinds of empirical analysis we train in is very useful. Many of the tools of experimental economics also find applications for tech companies in product design.
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Glad to hear that those tools are useful to someone! Why didn’t these empirical economists just go into physics or another empirical science? Engineering is also a useful outlet for their skills.
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As jaded as I am about academic economics, I can't deny that the tools are really useful. It's not an accident that most of the big tech companies have departments full of phd economists. I'd say about 50% of Econ phds I knew actually went that route
People have different interests and economic intuition isn't the same as spatial reasoning.
Doing empirical causal inference still requires thinking about human action and incentives, but it's in service of understanding why various measures may be biased and how those biases can be addressed.
Many of us do have backgrounds in the physical sciences, but find these puzzles more interesting to think about.