Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Pedigree Bias in Economics
At least anecdotally I think it is true that economics has a pedigree bias. Good departments tend to hire people from a limited subset of top schools. This is just as true in Australia as in the U.S. There are very few ANU economists who don't have a PhD from either a reasonably decent or even top U.S. school, a top British university (few if any less senior people) or ANU itself. The bias in geography, environmental science etc. certainly seems to be much less. When I went to grad school I wasn't aware of such biases at all. If I'd followed the advice of my masters' adviser (Department of Geography, London School of Economics) I would have applied to a top U.S. economics department. But as my undergrad alma mater wouldn't have accepted someone with as low a GPA as me in economics to do a masters' degree even (my third year undergrad GPA in econ was 90% or so but the first two years were a lot lower; my geography GPA was more than 90% in each year) I didn't think I stood a chance of getting a funded place. So I headed to geography. Again if I had been more aware of "pedigree" I probably would have headed to Ohio State (which made me an offer I didn't take up at the masters' level) for my PhD and wouldn't have been exposed to ecological economics at Boston University.
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Funny thing, I ended up at Maryland mostly by accident - it was only after I arrived that I discovered that both Daly and Costanza taught there.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the school never really understood or valued their contributions.
My wife went to Maryland in order to do a PhD with Costanza. Then after a year they all moved to Vermont... Maryland is strong in ag/res econ in general...
ReplyDeleteIIRC Daly is in the policy school, and Cropper, for example, is in economics, and Alberini is in ag-econ... even where faculty cross those lines pretty regularly I get the impression students don't much. At Hopkins most of the folks who use the kind of methods that are most interesting to me are over across town in the school of public health, and getting students to take the bus is like pulling teeth. Oh, interdisciplinarity, you seemed like such a good idea at the time!
ReplyDeleteYeah, when I taught at RPI it was very hard to get students to take classes at U. Albany which had a bigger econ department. One or two did and I think it was worthwhile for them. One has a good job here in Australia now (he's Chinese).
ReplyDeleteWe had a student do very well indeed by more or less using our less glamorous engineering department to get half her degree over there - it is, after all, arguably the best Public Health school in the world, and well worth having at the top of your cv if you can arrange it.
ReplyDelete(Though sometimes pedigree is transferrable anyhow - I gather my employers were pleased to hire someone from UCSB partly because the geography department there - with which I had zero contact - is fabulous).