IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v96y2006i2p453-457.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Matriculation in U.S. Economics Ph.D. Programs: How Many Accepted Americans Do Not Enroll?

Author

Listed:
  • T. Aldrich Finegan
  • Wendy A. Stock
  • John J. Siegfried

Abstract

Using a sample of 26 U.S. economics Ph.D. programs in Fall 2003, we estimate that only about 12 percent of the U.S. and Canadian students accepted for doctoral study did not enroll in any U.S. economics Ph.D. program in Fall 2003 or Fall 2004. It is not possible to increase the supply of new Ph.D. economists substantially by "closing the sale" on accepted applicants: additional qualified applicants are needed. Nonmatriculants are remarkably similar to enrollees in demographics, prior education, test scores, and fields of special interest, but express less interest in economic research and are less likely to have been offered financial aid. An expected financial aid deficiency was also the most-cited reason for deciding not to matriculate, followed by how long it takes to earn an economics Ph.D., and the expectation of higher lifetime earnings in a career other than economics. Most who decided against an economics Ph.D. enrolled in an alternative graduate program.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • T. Aldrich Finegan & Wendy A. Stock & John J. Siegfried, 2006. "Matriculation in U.S. Economics Ph.D. Programs: How Many Accepted Americans Do Not Enroll?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 453-457, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:96:y:2006:i:2:p:453-457
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/000282806777211612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/000282806777211612
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wendy A. Stock & T. Aldrich Finegan & John J. Siegfried, 2006. "Attrition in Economics Ph.D. Programs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 458-466, May.
    2. Charles E. Scott & John J. Siegfried, 2019. "American Economic Association Universal Academic Questionnaire Summary Statistics," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 590-592, May.
    3. David Colander, 1998. "The Sounds of Silence: The Profession's Response to the COGEE Report," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 80(3), pages 600-607.
    4. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 1999. "The Changing Distributions of New Ph.D. Economists and Their Employment: Implications for the Future," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 135-138, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Garrison Schlauch & Richard Startz, 2018. "The path to an economics PhD," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(4), pages 1864-1876.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sam Allgood & Gail Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick, 2018. "The Role of Teaching and Teacher Training in the Hiring and Promotion of Ph.D. Economists," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 912-927, January.
    2. Cawley, John & Morrisey, Michael A., 2007. "The earnings of U.S. health economists," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 358-372, March.
    3. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2013. "Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 162-172, March.
    4. Pedro Albarrán & Raquel Carrasco & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2017. "Are Migrants More Productive Than Stayers? Some Evidence From A Set Of Highly Productive Academic Economists," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(3), pages 1308-1323, July.
    5. Terence tai-leung Chong & Cally Choi & Benjamin Everard, 2009. "Who will win the Nobel Prize?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(2), pages 1107-1116.
    6. Colander, David, 2003. "The Aging of an Economist," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 157-176, June.
    7. KimMarie McGoldrick & Gail Hoyt & Dave Colander, 2008. "The Professional Development of Graduate Students in Economics," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0811, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    8. Wendy A. Stock & John J. Siegfried, 2006. "Time-to-Degree for the Economics Ph.D. Class of 2001-2002," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 467-474, May.
    9. Muhammad Asali, 2019. "A tale of two tracks," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 323-337, May.
    10. Fabian Waldinger, 2010. "Quality Matters - the Expulsion of Professors and Ph.D. Student Outcomes in Nazi Germany," CEP Discussion Papers dp0985, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Raquel Carrasco & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2019. "Spatial mobility in elite academic institutions in economics: the case of Spain," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 141-172, June.
    12. William J. Moore & Robert J. Newman & M. Dek Terrell, 2002. "Academic Economists' Pay and Productivity: A Tale of Two Countries," Departmental Working Papers 2002-16, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    13. John J. Siegfried & Wendy A. Stock, 2004. "The Labor Market for New Ph.D.s in 2002," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0401, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    14. Matthias Sutter & Martin Kocher & Robert Mrsic, 2002. "Representation and Educational Background of European Economists in Top Journals of Economics," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 29(4), pages 275-288, December.
    15. Joseph Gerald Hirschberg & Jeanette Ngaire Lye, 2020. "Grading Journals In Economics: The Abcs Of The Abdc," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 876-921, September.
    16. Kocher, Martin G & Sutter, Matthias, 2001. "The Institutional Concentration of Authors in Top Journals of Economics during the Last Two Decades," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(472), pages 405-421, June.
    17. Stock, Wendy A. & Finegan, T. Aldrich & Siegfried, John J., 2009. "Can you earn a Ph.D. in economics in five years?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 523-537, October.
    18. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 2012. "American Higher Education in Transition," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 193-216, Winter.
    19. Ashraf, Nava & Bandiera, Oriana & Jack, B. Kelsey, 2014. "No margin, no mission? A field experiment on incentives for public service delivery," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 1-17.
    20. Becker, Charles M. & Rouse, Cecilia Elena & Chen, Mingyu, 2016. "Can a summer make a difference? The impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on minority student outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 46-71.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • A23 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Graduate
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:96:y:2006:i:2:p:453-457. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.