<p>How good is Duke for economics when compared to its peer institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT? Does it specialise in any particular branch of economics such as Environmental Studies or Industrial Economics? Does it have a course in Philosophy and Economics like Yale which has Ethics, Politics and Economics or Penn which has Philosophy, Politics and Economics?</p>
<p>Duke has an excellent, broad economics program that should satisfy whatever your interests are. Duke also has a certificate program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: <a href="http://www.poli.duke.edu/ppe/%5B/url%5D">http://www.poli.duke.edu/ppe/</a></p>
<p>Here's a description of the program from the site:</p>
<p>What is PPE? The purpose of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Certificate Program</p>
<p>Economic and political theory, and their philosophical foundations, have in several important ways become increasingly interdisciplinary. First, without concern to boundaries, economists, political scientists and philosophers of science have become absorbed by the same questions about the explanatory and predictive powers of a set of approaches which the three disciplines share to varying degrees: rational choice, simulation and modeling, equilibrium analysis. At the same time, work in welfare economics, the design and management of political institutions, and the investigation of principles of political philosophy have converged on a small number of issues (such as distributive justice, the nature and role of rights, political obligation) at the intersection of all three disciplines. And both of these trends in the descriptive and normative dimensions of the three disciplines have already had substantial ramifications for work in every other part of all three disciplines separate agendas. The most reasonable expectation is that these impacts will be greater, not smaller, as the disciplines progress in the future.</p>
<p>However, undergraduate education has become departmentalized, because of splits in research activities of the faculties. Consequently, these interdisciplinary developments in economics, politics and philosophy, have so far had little impact in the education of undergraduates in these disciplines. Yet when you leave Duke, and pursue a career in public policy, law, health care, or management, you will find that the world may not conform to the boundaries of academic disciplines. Even if you return to the academy as a graduate students, you will be better able to compare, and understand, contributions that cross those boundaries.</p>
<p>For this reason, faculty in these disciplines have developed a certificate program that will both enable students in political science, economics, or philosophy to integrate, synthesize and exploit the most exaciting research work, as well as the traditional commonalities, in these three disciplines.</p>
<p>Besides providing a common framework within which students from the three disciplines can integrate and deploy what they learn in their respective majors on broader issues that intersect them, the program will enable them to assess the scope and limits of their major disciplines. For example, economics students may learn something from positive political theory about the design of institutions that cope with market failure, philosophy students may learn from economics about the incentive effects of various schemes of distributive justice, and political science students may learn from economics and philosophy something about the strengths and limits of varying normative foundations for the evaluation of public and private policy. Students in such a program going on to law school, business school, or graduate school in one of these fields, will bring to their further education a stronger basis for jurisprudence, a deeper appreciation of the explanatory and predictive powers of financial economics, and the bearing of rational choice theory on human institutions and human behavior. The program is also intended to have a similar benefit for students in other majors. Students in disciplines as diverse as molecular biology, ecology, biomedical engineering, or psychology and sociology, or for that matter history, religion, and cultural anthropology, can expect to face professional problems which combine normative and positive dimensions. Students in these disciplines who have integrated their economics, politics and philosophy courses in the way this program envisions will be equipped to deal with such problems more successfully.</p>
<p>Is this a major or a certificate like they have at Princeton?</p>
<p>Inuendo,</p>
<p>The program is a "Certificate" program, where you can major in something else. (The only reason I know this is that my S is considering it.)</p>
<p>This link will bring you to a good description of the program:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.poli.duke.edu/ppe/info.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.poli.duke.edu/ppe/info.html</a></p>
<p>Ooops- just noticed that incollege already gave the link. Sorry.</p>
<p>they said alot of companies recruit from duke at BDD</p>
<p>oh, and do a lot of kids minor with sometihng else besides econ?</p>
<p>yeah i heard goldman sachs is the number one recruiter of duke students (:</p>
<p>at the BDD they told us that i-banks seem to love duke students & that tons of duke students find their way to wall street...</p>
<p>Oh, I didn't know that. Is there any particular reason for this?</p>
<p>duke's econ program is particularly strong (and it has a tilt towards business, banking to compensate for the lack of a busniness school..)</p>
<p>and to paraphrase what the lady in the pre-business orientation told us, 'i-banks seem to think that duke imbibes in the students special qualities and have great faith in ou graduates..we don't know till today what it is, but it works'</p>
<p>but this is what i was told at a BDD, so the question could probably be better answered by a current student...</p>
<p>Inuendo,</p>
<p>You left out one of the premier Economics programs in the country - University of Chicago</p>
<p>I have not left it out patsfan. In fact, I was admitted to the University of Chicago but, ultimately, decided not to attend despite the incredible strength of its economics program. </p>
<p>Additionally my question was about an interdisciplinary program that involved Economics, Politics and Philosophy, which the University of Chicago does not provide.</p>
<p>My son is a first year who is majoring in Economics but is taking an additional major in public policy which will complement Economics. He could have chosen Political Science as well. There is enough overlap in the majors to make it easily doable.</p>
<p>I believe the same flexibility exists at Chicago if you tailor your electives to these areas.</p>
<p>I see. How would Duke's economics department compare to that of HYPS?</p>
<p>Duke's graduate econ department is ~20, while Harvard's and Princeton's are top 5. However, for undergrad it doesn't really matter because undergraduate classes are paced similarly at all schools so you will be learning the same material. I would say that there's a lot of access to professors at Duke and its fairly easy to take graduate level econ classes starting with junior year. The only problem with the econ department at Duke is that a lot of the kids have no interest in econ and only take classes because in it because it looks good for employers.</p>
<p>cowsrus, thats the ranking for the graduate schools, right? just wondering, where can I find those links?</p>