----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]