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The Chicago School of Economics. It all started here at the University of Chicago.
Fields of specialization in the Economics Stevens Doctoral Program include price theory, market design, industrial organization, behavioral economics, development economics, labor economics, public economics, health economics, urban economics, financial economics, and economic history.
Chicago Booth faculty have been responsible for many of the pioneering economic concepts that inform today’s global businesses and policymaking. And they’ll be your teachers, mentors, and research collaborators. For our macroeconomics faculty, visit the Booth faculty directory and select “Macro/International Business” under “Academic Area.”
Assistant Professor of Economics, Liew Family Junior Faculty Fellow, George G. Rinder Faculty Fellow
Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics
Paul G. McDermott Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship and Centel Foundation/Robert P. Reuss Faculty Scholar
Assistant Professor of Economics
Associate Professor of Economics and Charles E. Merrill Faculty Scholar
Professor of Economics
Joel F. Gemunder Professor of Strategy and Finance; John Edwardson Faculty Director Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation
Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics
V. Duane Rath Professor of Economics and Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow
Assistant Professor of Economics and Fujimori/Mou Faculty Scholar
Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics
Associate Professor of Economics and Robert H. Topel Faculty Scholar
Distinguished Fellow
David McDaniel Keller Professor of Economics and Business and Public Policy Fellow
W. Allen Wallis Distinguished Service Professor of Economics
Associate Professor of Economics
Assistant Professor of Economics and Liew Family Junior Faculty Fellow
David W. Johnson Professor of Economics
George C. Tiao Distinguished Service Professor of Economics
Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics
Associate Professor of Economics and William Ladany Faculty Scholar
Alumni have written dissertations in industrial organization, labor economics, microeconomics, and other related areas. Upon graduation, they go onto Career Outcomes in academics, government, and industry.
Assistant Professor in the Real Estate Group Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley Nick researches topics related to urbanization in developing countries. His current interests center on policy issues around transport and housing, with projects in India, Nigeria, Colombia and Brazil. His dissertation area is in economics.
Doctoral students at Booth have access to the resources of several high-powered research centers that offer funding for student work, host workshops and conferences, and foster a strong research community.
Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Bringing together researchers from the entire Chicago economics community, the Becker Friedman Institute fosters novel insights on the world’s most difficult economic problems.
George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State Dedicated to examining issues at the intersection of politics and the economy, the Stigler Center supports research by Doctoral students and others who are interested in the political, economic, and cultural obstacles to better working markets.
Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation Committed to making the world more equitable and sustainable, the Rustandy Center works to solve complex social and environmental problems. The center’s student support includes fellowships, research funding, and networking opportunities.
Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance Tasked with pushing the boundaries of research in finance, the Fama-Miller Center provides institutional structure and support for researchers in the field.
Center for Research in Security Prices CRSP maintains one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive stock market databases. Since 1963, it has been a valued resource for businesses, government, and scholars.
The Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets Enhancing the understanding of business and financial market globalization, the Clark Center for Global Markets positions Chicago Booth as a thought leader in the understanding of ever-changing markets and improves financial and economic decision-making around the world.
Chicago Booth is home to some of the most prestigious academic journals in economics.
The Journal of Labor Economics presents international research on the relationship between labor and the economy.
The Journal of Law and Economics has published some of the most influential and widely cited articles on a broad range of economic topics.
The Journal of Political Economy , one of the oldest economics journals in the world, focuses on the relationship between government and the economy.
Our faculty and PhD students continually produce high-level research. The Chicago Booth Review frequently highlights their contributions in economics.
A study of subsidized training programs and incentives. Research from Hamna Ahmed (Lahore School of Economics), Zunia Tirmazee (Lahore), Rebecca Wu (UChicago PhD), and Emma Zhang (Chicago Booth PhD), suggest that including parents in decision-making may be most effective.
A study by Chicago Booth's Milena Almagro, Eric Chyn (University of Texas), and Bryan A. Stuart (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia) investigate what happened to Chicago's public housing system and find that demolishing public housing increased inequality.
Rather than investing in putting more medical facilities in remote areas, it could be more effective to pay for patients to visit healthcare facilities, according to research by Chicago Booth's Johnathan Dingel, Joshua D. Gottlieb (UChicago Harris School), Maya Lozinski (Harris PhD) and Pauline Mourot (Chicago Booth PhD).
The National Bureau of Economics (NBER) awarded PhD Student, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, a dissertation fellowship to support his research in the economics of credit information.
Nick Tsivanidis, PhD ’18, talks about the culture of interdisciplinary study he found at Booth.
Video Transcript
Nick Tsivanidis, ’18: 00:03 My PhD thesis was about how commute costs shape economic organization in cities. Billions of people over the next 50, 100 years, they're going to be moving into mostly developing cities. Governments are going to spend huge amounts of money on providing new infrastructure to try and accommodate them. My project had both macro and applied micro elements. One of the benefits of Booth is that you have access to people from a wide range of areas who are very happy to encourage you to work on interdisciplinary topics.
Nick Tsivanidis, ’18: 00:38 I've always been interested in development and in particular how cities and countries can use evidence-based policy to try and improve welfare of their citizens. I've decided that pursuing a PhD would allow me to research and help translate that research into policy. What attracted me to the PhD program here at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business was this culture of interdisciplinary study. People at Chicago certainly aren't scared or will shy away from trying to think at the intersection of different areas. This is where a lot of very fruitful and productive new research actually takes place, which is at the border of frontiers. That really attracted me to come here.
From the effects of government regulation on economies to the impact of urban transit infrastructures, our PhD students examine a wide range of economic issues. When they graduate, they go on to positions at some of the top universities and companies in the world.
Current Students
Franco Calle Hannah Case
Emily Crawford
Paulo Henrique de Alcantara Ramos
Camille Hillion
Tyler Jacobson
Nidhaanjit Jain Muqi (Bill) Lai
Jerry Ma Sean McMahon Milad Mozafari-Vanani
Lucy Msall Jeffrey Ohl
Fern Ramoutar
Pengyu Ren Gabriele Romano
Jorge Tello Garza Julia Wu
Emily (Emma) Zhang Michelle Zheng
The Stevens Doctoral Program at Chicago Booth is a full-time program. Students generally complete the majority of coursework and examination requirements within the first two years of studies and begin work on their dissertation during the third year. For details, see General Examination Requirements by Area in the Stevens Program Guidebook below.
Download the 2023-2024 Guidebook!
The Ph.D. Program in the Department of Economics at Harvard is addressed to students of high promise who wish to prepare themselves in teaching and research in academia or for responsible positions in government, research organizations, or business enterprises. Students are expected to devote themselves full-time to their programs of study.
The program prepares students for productive and stimulating careers as economists. Courses and seminars offered by the department foster an intellectually active and stimulating environment. Each week, the department sponsors more than 15 different seminars on such topics as environmental economics, economic growth and development, monetary and fiscal policy, international economics, industrial organization, law and economics, behavioral economics, labor economics, and economic history. Top scholars from both domestic and international communities are often invited speakers at the seminars. The Harvard community outside of the department functions as a strong and diverse resource. Students in the department are free to pursue research interests with scholars throughout the University. Faculty of the Harvard Law School, Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Business School, for example, are available to students for consultation, instruction, and research guidance. As a member of the Harvard community, students in the department can register for courses in the various schools and have access to the enormous library resources available through the University. There are over 90 separate library units at Harvard, with the total collections of books and pamphlets numbering over 13 million. Both the department and the wider University draw some of the brightest students from around the world, which makes for a student body that is culturally diverse and likely unequaled in the range of intellectual interests of its members. These factors combine to add an important dimension to the educational process. Students are able to learn from one another, collaborate on research projects and publications, and form bonds that are not broken by distance once the degree is completed and professional responsibilities lead them in different directions.
HBS faculty conduct research on a wide variety of topics. In the application you must indicate your top three choices of research areas, in order of preference, from the topics listed below. Top applicants will be matched with faculty-designed research project based on their indicated interests.
1. Corporate Social Responsibility research explores business impact of delivering economic, social, and environmental benefits to stakeholders.
2. Business and Government researchers study the economic, political, social, and legal environment in which businesses operate. Drawing from perspectives of economic theory, political science, and history, they examine the “rules” and policies established by government and other non-business institutions that affect business in the United States; turn to history to understand the origins of today’s business environment as well as some of the alternatives that have emerged from time to time; and study other countries’ business environments and their historical development. This group of scholars is deeply interested in the impact of globalization and the way rules are emerging to govern international economic transactions as globalization proceeds.
4. Performance Measurement and Outcomes scholars study drivers and effectiveness of performance measurement and management control systems.
5. Market Design seeks to translate economic theory and analysis into practical solutions to real-world problems.
6. Finance researchers strive to understand how managers and firms make value-enhancing decisions; and how financial institutions, markets, and instruments contribute to this process.
7. Globalization scholars concentrate on the effectiveness of management practices in global organizations; cross-cultural learning and adaptation processes; the challenges of taking companies global; emerging-market companies with global potential; and international political economy and its impact on economic development.
8. Health Care research studies how potential application management principles and best practices from other industries can be applied; how the process of innovation can be improved; how principles of strategy and consumer choice can be utilized; how information technology can expand access, decrease costs, and improve quality; and devising approaches in developing nations can impact global health.
9. Human Behavior and Decision-Making research focuses on individual and interactive judgment and decision making, with applications to organizational behavior, consumer behavior, behavioral operations, and behavioral economics. Research topics include the psychology of conversation, ethical decision-making (including cheating and self-deception), the impact of rituals on mourning and consumption, team and organizational dynamics and performance, whether money makes people happy, when and why people disclose information, and health behavior change.
10. Leadership research explores questions of organization change, power and influence, innovation management, and the crucial role leadership plays in organizational success. The topic of leadership spans all academic units at HBS and fosters a collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach.
11. Social Enterprise research seeks to understand the challenges associated with driving sustained, high-impact social change. Current research focuses on leadership of socially mission-driven organizations; the role of business leaders and corporate citizenship in driving social change; business models that address poverty; management of high-performing K-12 public school districts; and financing models for the non-profit sector
12. Technology and Innovation research focuses on value creation of platforms and two-sided markets; use of open architecture and leverage of its collective value; development and execution of innovation strategies; innovative attributes of executives and firms; development of new markets through the creation of disruptive innovations that displace earlier technologies; development of innovations in sectors; and the impact of innovation on economic growth.
13. Other. It is impossible to capture all that HBS faculty study. If you have a specific interest in an area not listed above, please select this category to describe an area of research within the disciplines of economics, sociology, psychology, policy, or history that is relevant to business academia.
There is a broad range of topics that you can study for your PhD in Economics. This page contains some examples of areas we cover. Staff Profiles also give information on research areas covered by specific members of faculty.
We offer supervision on a range of topics in economics from social and behaviour economics to game theory and contract theory, from sports economics and neuroeconomics to health economics and family economics, from search and matching and international economics to political conflict and occupational mobility. Our strengths, in particular, are in:
The ability to match your topic with our supervision team is equally as important as your topic. We will not admit a student where we cannot provide the very best supervision. Therefore, you should think carefully about whether your topic matches our research interests. You will be asked to address this during the application process. The School is committed to providing the best possible experience to our PhD students, this can only be done by ensuring students receive the very best supervision and support.
If, before applying, you would like to check whether we can offer supervision in your proposed area of research, then please contact us by completing the supervision contact form .
To help you see the sorts of topics that you could study here at Edinburgh, the following list of topics with suggested reading may help. It is intended to be indicative rather than exhaustive or prescriptive. We encourage all applicants to visit our academic staff list and the profiles of our current PhD students to get a flavour of the research topics we can offer.
Developing countries are typically characterised by large agricultural employment shares, and low labour productivity in agriculture relative to non-agriculture. This is an old topic that has received renewed interest recently with the advent of macroeconomic models featuring heterogeneity in agriculture and embedding agriculture into the aggregate economy.
Quantitative trade models struggle to account for the growth of world trade in the period 1950-?2010. Several extensions of quantitative trade models have been proposed to solve this “puzzle”. All of them are partially successful on their own, but they have not been explored jointly to determine how much of the puzzle remains.
A large fraction of the variation in aggregate productivity across the world can be traced back to differences in the evolution and organization of firms. Firms differ in their access to credit, quality of management, innovation, factor choices, etc. Current macroeconomic models are a useful tool to determine the optimal distribution of firms and from there measure the impact of misallocation within firms as well as across firms. In particular, they can be used to study the effect of economy-specific policies, institutions, and endowments on the aggregate economy through the evolution of firms.
Distinct economic sectors are cross-linked through the exchange of intermediate inputs, which are important production factors that are typically ignored when sectoral output is defined by value added. As economies differ substantially in their relative sectoral TFP levels, these differences feedback non-trivially into other sectors. There is scope to improve our understanding of the effect of sector-specific distortions on aggregate productivity via the incorporation of intermediate inputs.
The costs of sovereign default are important for our understanding of why countries repay their foreign debts. A recent literature has started to explore the economic and legal costs of sovereign default empirically but there is still a lot of scope for data?driven projects in this area.
Information is fundamental to rewards and punishments. An important question in principal-agent models is what information is created, communicated, hidden, fabricated, verified, or destroyed.
With heterogeneous agents on the both sides of the market it is possible to address not only unemployment, but also match quality and therefore whether government interventions such as unemployment benefits would improve matching.
House prices and house sales are positively correlated. Yet time on the market is negatively correlated with prices. Search theory is a natural paradigm to study housing markets since it captures the illiquidity of houses and the fact that the degree of liquidity may vary with market conditions.
In directed search models, workers do not encounter firms completely at random but try to locate those posting attractive positions. Age, experience and employment position of a worker will all help determine a worker’s optimal search strategy.
How does economic activity impact health and how does health affect economic activity. For example, it has been found that unemployment may cause depression, suicide, and bad health outcomes in general. How does this affect other members of the family? If the primary earner is unemployed, does this translate to worse health outcomes / health behaviours of the family members? How does life expectancy impact on consumption decisions for durable and other goods?
There are two ways of creating incentives for interacting agents to behave in a desired way. One is by providing appropriate payoff incentives, which is the subject of mechanism design. The other is by choosing the information that agents observe: information design. Much work has been done on mechanism design. Information design is a more recent topic of interest.
While most works in economics takes preferences as exogenously given, recent evidence suggests that personal experiences have the potential to shape certain parameters (e.g. people growing up during a recession being more risk averse in their investments). Meanwhile, the proposed effects of culture (i.e. individualist versus collectivist) on political and economic institutions beg the question of whether culture/beliefs themselves can be influenced by institutions such as curriculum and media.
Much work has been done on auctions and auction design. An important topic in auction theory is the disclosure of information.
Is there a trade-off between the quality and quantity communication when respondents have a strategic incentive to misreport?
Relational contracting between two or more agents, with and without complete information is an important topic for understanding how investment and transactions within a relationship change over time.
An important topic for macroeconomics is to understand how wages are set over the cycle and how wages evolve over time and how that interacts with productivity and unemployment.
Global games can be applied to understand financial and macroeconomic problems, in which agents may be prone to self-fulfilling panics, such as in bank runs.
How does risk-taking vary with gender, relative position and inequality? How does it impact on economic performance?
How do sellers compete in attracting buyers? How do buyers decide where and what to bid? There are many ways of thinking about this problem, some ideas can be found in the following:
PhD students take 16 courses, roughly half of which are spent acquiring the core analytic tools of the profession (microeconomics, macroeconomics, and quantitative methods), with the balance spent applying those tools in particular fields of specialization. All PhD students must complete a doctoral dissertation (thesis).
The PhD in Economics is a STEM designated degree program.
View the complete PhD Rules here
Doctoral students must complete a minimum of 16 semester courses (64 credits). They are required to successfully complete the core courses by the end of the first year.
These core courses must be passed by the end of the first year with a grade of at least B- in each course.
Students must also take EC 705 Mathematical Economics in the first semester, unless a waiver is granted, and EC 709 Advanced Econometrics II (4 credits) in the third semester.
In addition, students must pass a qualifying examination in both microeconomics and macroeconomics. Students have at most three opportunities to take the qualifying examinations; failing may result in termination from the PhD program.
All students must pass 2 2-course fields, each with a minimum grade average of B.
In addition, students must take at least 2 other courses. The following fields are generally offered each year:
All courses must be passed with a grade of B– or higher. An overall grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 must be attained in all courses taken after enrollment in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
The PhD program is designed so that a typical student can complete all requirements within 5 to 6 years. International students may be subject to additional restrictions imposed by the terms of their visas, as governed by the International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO).
Students are expected to meet the following milestones each year:
By the end of the 1st year:
By the end of the 2nd year:
By the end of the 3rd year:
Years 4, 5, and (if necessary) 6:
Under the supervision of two faculty advisers, a student prepares a dissertation proposal for presentation at a proposal seminar. If the proposal is approved, the student proceeds to research and write the dissertation. When the dissertation is completed, the student must defend it at a final oral examination. The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences requires that the dissertation be completed within seven years of initial enrollment in the program.
For more details, view the complete PhD Rules here and check out our past PhD Placements here .
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VIDEO
COMMENTS
Spatial distribution of economic activities and innovation. Transport economics. Local economic impacts and drivers of internal and external immigration. Local and regional determinants of social mobility and inequality. Levelling-up: drivers of local productivity and growth.
This list of Ph.D. Topics in Economics can help you identify the areas you can work on. Occupational injuries in Pakistan and its effect on the economy. Injuries are the leading cause of the global burden of disability.
For economics dissertation topics: Follow economic news and debates. Study emerging areas like behavioral economics. Analyze policy gaps or challenges. Review economic theories and their applications. Explore data-driven research opportunities. Seek topics aligning with your passion and career aspirations.
1688. Photo by Burak The Weekender on Pexels.com. The top 50 research ideas in economics is a complex task that can cover a wide range of topics. This journey into the world of economic exploration unveils 50 thought-provoking research ideas that span a multitude of crucial domains.
Our experts have curated a comprehensive list of the best economics research paper topics you can use in your next project. Browse through the list and find the perfect research topics
From the effects of government regulation on economies to the impact of urban transit infrastructures, our PhD students examine a wide range of economic issues. When they graduate, they go on to positions at some of the top universities and companies in the world.
Each week, the department sponsors more than 15 different seminars on such topics as environmental economics, economic growth and development, monetary and fiscal policy, international economics, industrial organization, law and economics, behavioral economics, labor economics, and economic history.
1. Corporate Social Responsibility research explores business impact of delivering economic, social, and environmental benefits to stakeholders. 2. Business and Government researchers study the economic, political, social, and legal environment in which businesses operate.
There is a broad range of topics that you can study for your PhD in Economics. This page contains some examples of areas we cover. Staff Profiles also give information on research areas covered by specific members of faculty.
PhD in Economics. PhD students take 16 courses, roughly half of which are spent acquiring the core analytic tools of the profession (microeconomics, macroeconomics, and quantitative methods), with the balance spent applying those tools in particular fields of specialization.