Do math major and econ major. Double major is better than math+econ combined major, because students take more courses in each subject. Econ courses r much easier than math, so math major students use econ courses to pull up GPA if needed.
I was a double major in Econ and Math, or more specifically mathematical methods in the social sciences. Loved it.
That some students at even the most elite colleges may struggle with quantitative courses really shouldn’t be surprising considering that they may have gotten in because they are or have done some combination of the following:
-Recruited athlete
-Started a campaign to vaccinate/feed/fund 3rd world villages
-Been editor of a top-ranked HS newspaper
-Wrote poetry that is nationally acclaimed
and etc., none of which show any potential to be able to do anything quantitative.
Someone I know mentioned that in his b-school class was a guy who graduated from Princeton. He could write really well, but had trouble with stuff like figuring out what (x-y)^2 was equal to.
Most of the economics majors I know picked it because it’s easy (at least here) and has decent job security. The few I know who are really passionate about it are double majoring with math or statistics and get a special certificate in Quantitative Economics. I’d imagine it’s pretty similar at most schools excluding the super elite ones.
I have taught a calculus-based intermediate micro course on occasion. There really is no need to do lots of advanced math beyond partial derivatives and integral calculus. What we are teaching in that course is still the economic way of thinking with some calculus applications. Adding even more advanced math might be appealing to some students, but the opportunity cost is insufficient attention to the intuition which is really important.
To answer the OP question, we find it important to start to incorporate calculus in the undergrad curriculum in econ (and linear algebra in good econometrics classes) , but we place a high value on continuing to teach the economic way of thinking and this itself doesn’t need higher level mathematics. I also teach PhD students. We sometimes describe our grad students as “knowing a lot of math but not much economics” or “knowing a lot of economics but not enough math” and these are all students who have had quite a bit of both.
The man who started this went to Evergreen, where I don’t know if they even have an Econ dept.
http://www.eoionline.org
And so did Joe Dear, who pulled CalPERS out of the recession, until he died a year ago.
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-joseph-dear-20140228-story.html
Now, I’m so sad. An interesting & interested man.
Looks like some well respected schools’ intermediate economics courses do not require calculus at all. For example, consider Penn State: http://bulletins.psu.edu/undergrad/courses/E/ECON/ . The regular courses ECON 302, 304, 306 do not have any math prerequisites. There are “honors” versions ECON 302H, 304H, 306H which require just calculus 1. Penn State’s class schedule indicates that the percentage of students taking the “honors” versions is in the single digits.
These are some of the econ course offered at schools I listed with mathematical economics majors or tracks:
Games & Strategies in Economics (prereq: calculus, single var)
Linear Optimization and Game Theory (prereq: linear algebra)
Economic Statistics with Calculus
Economic Statistics (prereq: calculus, multi var)
Mathematical Economics (prereq: calculus, multi var)
Microeconomic Theory (prereq: calculus, multi var)
Econometrics (prereq: multivar calculus / linear algebra)
Applied Econometrics ((prereq: calculus, probability)
To the extent one can tell from the brief online descriptions, some of these schools do seem to be offering math-oriented economics courses.
The schools I listed are just the first few that showed up in a search for “mathematical economics” majors/tracks. Do they consistently offer a richer variety of such courses than colleges that don’t offer such a program? I really don’t know; maybe this is indeed a silly distinction. Macalester College is an example of a school that has a high economics PhD production rate (per Siegfried & Stock 2006). Although it does not offer a distinct “mathematical economics” program/track, it does require all econ majors to take multivariable calculus and statistical modeling courses. At least one of these (or linear algebra) is a prerequisite to some advanced econ courses at Macalester. For example, an Intro to Econometrics course requires both multivariable calculus and statistical modeling as prerequisites. An Empirical Finance course requires multivar calc and linear algebra as prerequisites.
Then there is the possibility that some student projects involve a fair amount of sophomore level (or higher) mathematics (irrespective of the course prereqs). I’m guessing some of the following econ department theses at Reed College did.
An examination of rational speculative bubble models: Early rational bubble models, herding, and heterogenous beliefs
Predictive validity of the new SAT reasoning test
Markov chain Monte Carlo and the Black-Scholes formula
Interest rates and deficit expectations using real-time data
Prediction and parameter estimation in the presence of missing data
Creative destruction in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework : evaluation through calibration and simulation
Time-varying risk premia and the euro: A state-space model
Zipf’s law and international integration: An exploration of the rank-size distribution for cities
Financial systemic risk : classification and measurement
On simulating a new Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model: Replicating Smets and Wouters
Reed ranked #5 in Siegfried & Stock’s Economics Program-Size Normalized Top American Sources of
Eventual Economics Ph.D.s, 1997-2003. Nevertheless, its economics department has no formal mathematics requirement.
Wellesley has a lot of “harder” Economics courses that require advanced math (including multivariable calc)… I find it interesting that at some schools Economics is a joke major while at others it’s one of the most difficult.
@tk21769, yep, some of those would require higher-level math. Others wouldn’t.
I don’t think econ is really a joke major at most schools.
They mean advanced relative to what many college students come with, which I would argue is Calc I or Precal.
I don’t disagree. Math post algebra/basic geometry is treated like voodoo magic that only “math people” get.
Because calculus is useless to most people. An understanding of probability and statistics would be far more useful. And I say this as a math major who loved pretty much every aspect of math.
We also do not have enough math teachers.
If you are able to teach higher level mathematics, likely you also have paths available to you besides teaching.
I would be ok with paying teachers a premium for fields that are difficult to fill.
Amherst College is one LAC that offers a math-heavy track of economics courses in addition to the normal track. See ECON 301, 331, and 361.
Not all areas of higher math are equally applicable to economics. Calculus, linear algebra, and statistics seem to be the most important. I think the question is about the extent to which applicable higher math is prerequisite to economics courses and integrated into the course content.
I’m not sure all will agree with me on this, but as someone with a strong math background who took some math-lite econ chooses and some math-intensive courses, I always felt that the math-lite courses were more econ appreciation than econ. Great teachers can make the econ appreciation courses exciting and full of Insight, but most students don’t really understand that much from the math-lite versions. Similar in my mind to physics without calculus. You get intuition but probably little real understanding.
When my son became an econ major, I suggested he take a math course every semester, which he found surprisingly easy and relaxing, and so became an accidental math major as well. This had been useful to him in a couple of ways. Because econ appreciation courses can be taught at different levels of difficulty, observers may not know if an econ major is really smart, even with good grades. Most Americans know very little advanced math (actually any math at all) but they assume you must be smart if you are a math major and made it through. Second, after doing his first startup, my son decided to go back to school and learn about the “science” of big data as part of his graduate education and the strength of his math background (and innate competence) make certain hard courses easier for him than for very strong classmates.
It varies, but I’d say that at most colleges the economics (not business) major is considered more difficult than the average major, though not as hard as math or engineering. It’s sometimes a requirement that students take at least a “lite” course in multivariable calculus and a calculus based statistics class, but even if it’s not most concentrators tend to do so anyway.
There are often lots of economics concentrators, and they will have varying levels of mathematical aptitude. Most schools that have the resources will have a regular track and a mathematical (honors) track through the concentration. I agree with the poster above that students with good math backgrounds actually find the mathematical version of classes easier than the regular version, and the caliber of students is noticeably higher. Most good math students find their economics classes relatively easy, but the danger for them is that they confuse the technical tools of the subject with actual non-trivial economic insight. Good economists aren’t impressed by a paper bedazzled with lots of equations.
The amount of math someone needs to know in order to do well as an undergraduate Economics major is much less than what’s required to get admitted to a good Ph.D. program in Economics. For example, a rigorous treatment of the stochastic (Ito) integral is generally a graduate topic even in a math department. Undergraduates who think they might want to go on to get a Ph.D. are often advised to get a minor / major in math. There just aren’t enough of them to offer a third “super-mathematical” track through the major.
Greg Mankiw, a professor at Harvard, has a blog with lots of good advice. Here’s a few relevant tidbits, all blatantly stolen from him but edited by me -
On math & admissions to a Ph.D. program in economics:
Isn’t it a basic problem that terms such as “econ” or “math” or “science” are used without much distinction, and end up meaning very different things to different people. Econ is just a very vast field with different specialties, and not all of those specialties require what is considered as advanced math. Again, the definitions are not cast in stone.
Let’s look at this line:
Is there ONE place where the person in this story could find the science he needs to develop his “big data” acumen? The reality is that people who work in this field range from amateurs to true experts. Some have come from the ranks of econ majors, math majors, and many from the more “scientific” Physics departments. And some have simply learned their trade by using professional tools or are autodidacts extraordinaire.
The following article is interesting (until it gets into the details of ■■■■■■■’s education angle) about how fluid the terms tossed around really are.
http://www.■■■■■■■.com/blog/ceo-jose-ferreira/big-data-mathematics/