Prof. Michael Roach

Michael Roach (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His areas of expertise include law and economics and sports economics.




You went to a small liberal arts college. What are the advantages and disadvantages of going to a small liberal arts college when you plan to go to grad school in economics?

In going to graduate school in economics, you are training to be able to rigorously explore important and interesting questions about the choices people make. Because it is such a wide-ranging discipline, a wide-ranging undergraduate education, as emphasized in a liberal arts college, can be an asset. If it gives students more context in which to think about the tradeoffs people have to make in a variety of settings, it can be a big advantage in developing and sustaining a research agenda. Another, more concrete, advantage of attending a liberal arts college is the small classes and how that leads to a situation where students really get to know their professors. This can lead to students having more (and more productive) conversations about their futures. The interaction with faculty that is encouraged there can really help students understand if graduate school really is for them and, if so, get them on a path to being as prepared as possible for it. A student who wants to go to graduate school in economics is really not all that constrained by the undergraduate course offerings at a liberal arts college: between the economics, math, and computer science courses, a liberal arts education can certainly prepare students for the rigors of a top-flight graduate program.   

One disadvantage of attending a liberal arts college, as compared to a larger research university, is that it is much more difficult to take (or even audit) graduate classes that might help prepare students for studying economics at the graduate level (or to get a sense of whether or not it is something they would want to pursue). Furthermore, at larger universities, faculty members may have larger research budgets that allow them to bring on undergraduate students to do paid research work. If you already know you want to be an economist, the availability of that type of work could be an attractive feature of a larger university.

Are there any books that were important to your development as an economist or that you would recommend to aspiring economists?

The Winner’s Curse by Richard Thaler was one book that really made me excited about studying economics more deeply. It digs into a variety of situations where economic theory does not explain observed behavior. The paradoxes described are interesting individually, but I liked the book so much because it got me thinking generally about the limits of theories designed to explain what people do. The realization that economics was “messy” in this way made it much more interesting to me and made me excited about the challenges it presents.

Also, even though they aren't about economics specifically, I always think back to several books written by Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, about his life and experiences. There are several of them (The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, and What Do You Care What Other People Think?). I’m obviously not a physicist, but his discussions of science and curiosity apply to economists as well.

What is the worst advice that you have ever been given about becoming an economist?

I actually got really good advice from my professors and mentors about preparing for graduate school and what to expect, so I really can’t complain about that at all. One thing I wish I had realized (I was probably told this at some point, but it was the sort of thing I suppose I had to learn for myself) was that the transition from coursework to doing your own research can be tricky. They are complementary phases of graduate school, certainly, but they require different skills. It’s helpful to at least keep some part of your brain thinking about what types of questions you want to address even as you are powering through your coursework. That makes navigating the transition a bit easier.

Prof. Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan (Ph.D., Princeton University) is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He specializes in public economics, public choice, psychology and economics, public opinion, economics of the family and education, genoeconomics, and Austrian economics. He is the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, named “the best political book of the year” by the New York Times, and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. He is currently writing a new book: The Case Against Education: A Professional Student Explains Why Our Education System Is a Big Waste of Time and Money. He writes EconLog, named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top websites in the economics blogosphere.


 

You're a prolific blogger, but you're also a Ph.D. Am I, a non-Ph.D., wasting my time blogging about economics?

If you want to be an economist, you are absolutely *not* “wasting your time” with a blog.  It may not help you get into a better college, but writing about a topic is probably the best way to truly learn about it.  If all you do is read, it’s easy to kid yourself about how much you understand.  But writing is explaining, and as an old saying goes, “If you can’t explain something clearly to someone else, you probably don’t understand it yourself.”  And along the way, you’ll make personal connections with practicing economists, any one of which could be a huge professional help to you.  Keep blogging, young economist!

Milton Friedman's Nobel Prize

A few weeks ago, my sister visited the University of Chicago, and took this picture of the Nobel Prize in Economics that Milton Friedman got along with other awards he won.