What Degree to do Economic Modeling for Banks or Insurance Companies, etc. ?

College Majors
1

Hello all,

Miami University, Oxford Ohio. Right now undergraduate, majoring in Business Economics.

Was also planning on declaring a second major in Statistics so that I would be more qualified to do financial modeling.

However, there is an accelerated program which allows you to get a bachelors degree and a masters degree in Econ in 4 years.

Would it be more beneficial to get the masters in 4 years, or to double major in Econ and Stats? I don’t think I will have enough time to double major as an undergrad and complete the combined program within 4 years.

Furthermore, maybe I’m looking at the wrong combination of majors to enter these desired jobs anyways? What majors should I be looking at to get jobs with commercial, corporate, and investment banks, as well as insurance companies, doing economic analysis and modeling?

Thanks to all in advance.

2

It depends on the classes that you’d have to take/would be able to take, but on average, it would likely be more beneficial to do the double major in economics and statistics. Economics can be a quantitative field - especially at the graduate level - but many (most, I’d guess) economics undergraduate majors don’t actually require you to take all of the math/stats classes you need to set you up for modeling - people who go onto PhDs in economics generally decide to take those on their own.

You could also do the combined program. You’d simply have to plan carefully to make sure you take the higher-level math/stats classes that you need to be competitive for quant jobs. Your economics and math/stats advisors could help you with that.

A statistics major will actually teach you the skills you need to learn to do the modeling, and is a great pairing with economics. Applied math is another really good choice. You may also need to take some classes outside of the strict requirement of a statistics major to really fully prepare you for quant (some classes that may be beneficial, like optimization or stochastic modeling, may not be routinely taught in a statistics major but would likely be offered in a math or applied math department/major.