Truck and Barter

Alright, I'll try to pick up the slack, but don't be surprised if, as your previous post implies it should, that the blog turns into a discussion of Los Angeles pron industry economics. We'll be discussing "the size of the firm", "factor demand", Akerlof's "lemons", "comparative statics" and some "endogenous growth theory". Hopefully, we'll get into some related institutions in Nevada where Mankiw's "menu costs" come into play.

I would also like to add that it still amazes me how good the job market is for Econ Phds. Reading some of the blogs which focus on the Humanities is pretty depressing. What's surprising is that mathematics isn't as great as you would expect, maybe that's why so many end up in econ.

In general, all I knew about were the poor prospect for humanities Ph.D's. Where can I find more info on math and stats Ph.D.s?

It's the professional applied statisticians who would easily dominate economics, if it were a pure applied science. How do they do?

Most of the pure mathematicians I knew would had little interest in economics, or in many other "real-world" activities. I would expect them to do OK, except that their best alternative opportunities were usually to teach at the high school level instead of college level.

Kevin,

I read something similar to this:

http://www.geoffdavis.net/dartmouth/policy/indicators.html

What originally pointed this out was a job market survey similar to the one done in economics. The unemployment numbers were higher than one would have thunk, surprised me at the time.

This should probably be a post in itself because these poor prospects aren't in line with Ian's post below where quantative college courses have a much higher return. Unlike economics where we have many applications outside of the narrowly defined field(let's face it, econ is trying to take over the world), perhaps these math people need more applied work to make them attractive. I should say that a math phd would never be without work, he could always teach high school.

As far knowing math Phds switching, we have one here and had read that it was fairly common(think it was USN&W message board when researching schools).

A lot more military jobs are outsourced than you imagine. Over the years, DOD has shifted a lot of functions from military personnel to private contractors and many of our "allies" in Iraq are there only because we are paying them to be there.

Bruce,

Point well taken.

However, I don't consider military privatization to be offshore outsourcing--unless it was already and habitually performed by military or American companies, and was switched to companies not under American control.

For instance, I'm hard pressed to label the use of a foreign private supplier--instead of Halliburton--to perform specific functions in Iraq as "outsourcing". Such functions were not traditionally performed in the US by Americans.