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Since David has mentioned the Duke Ph.D. program for Young’s student, perhaps I can note a
couple of points. First, the program is only willing to accept students interested in
writing a dissertation in mainstream economics, as usually understood. Current strengths
in financial econometrics, macro, and several fields of applied micro require students
interested in excelling in
core fields. We have found most North American undergraduate students, not all but most,
quite unprepared for the technical demands of our Ph.D program, an issue we now understand
is widely recognized among top programs, and was much discussed in our recent external
evaluation. Major doctoral institutions are aware that most North American undergraduate
students also have no idea what research in economics consists of, or how it is done.
 
We do not permit dissertations to be written in HOPE at Duke. We are delighted to work
with Ph.d students to include chapters in their thesis publishable to our standards
however, and work with them to keep them attached to our field through their graduate
career, and after. But they must become serious mainstream economists. There is an
extensive discussion of these issues in the HOPE supplement volume The Future of the
History of Economics, which I edited in 2002.  See especially the papers by current Duke
students Brown and Saunders, and former students Meardon and Gayer.
 
For someone who expresses a serious interest in the history and philosophy of economics,
as Young’s student does, I urge as well consideration of a Ph.D program in the History and
Philosophy of Science, obtaining an M.S. in Economics as concurrent bona fides. LSE has a
fine program, for instance, as does Notre Dame, UCLA, etc. The expected future income
would be less, and the job prospects less secure, but the necessity to face research
expectations of
publication in the JPE, AER, QJE, Econometrica, etc. in the alternate course is not to
every HET-er's taste.
 
E. Roy Weintraub 
Duke University 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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