IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v28y2009i5p523-537.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can you earn a Ph.D. in economics in five years?

Author

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

Abstract

We investigate graduate school outcomes for students who entered economics Ph.D. programs in fall 2002. Students in Top-15 ranked programs and those with higher verbal and quantitative GRE scores are less likely to have dropped out, but no more likely to have graduated. Those with undergraduate degrees from Top-60 U.S. liberal arts colleges and from foreign universities have lower attrition and higher completion probabilities. There are important differences in the characteristics associated with retention and completion probabilities between U.S. citizens and non-citizens and between men and women.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:28:y:2009:i:5:p:523-537
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272-7757(09)00039-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    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. Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Panagiotis G. Mavros, 1995. "Do Doctoral Students' Financial Support Patterns Affect Their Times-To-Degree and Completion Probabilities?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(3), pages 581-609.
    3. Jeffrey Groen & George Jakubson & Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Scott Condie & Albert Yung-Hsu Liu, 2006. "Program Design and Student Outcomes in Graduate Education," NBER Working Papers 12064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Susan Athey & Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger & Steven Levitt & James Poterba, 2007. "What Does Performance in Graduate School Predict? Graduate Economics Education and Student Outcomes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 512-520, May.
    5. John J. Siegfried & Wendy A. Stock, 1999. "The Labor Market for New Ph.D. Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 115-134, Summer.
    6. Wendy A. Stock & Lee W. Hansen, 2004. "Ph. D. Program Learning and Job Demands: How Close Is the Match?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 266-271, May.
    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. Eric S. Lin & Shih-Yung Chiu, 2016. "Does Holding a Postdoctoral Position Bring Benefits for Advancing to Academia?," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 57(3), pages 335-362, May.
    2. Jenny Bourne & Nathan D. Grawe & Michael Hemesath & Prathi Seneviratne & Maya Jensen, 2024. "The Disappearing Gender Gap in Scholarly Publication of Economists at Liberal Arts Colleges," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 117-134, January.
    3. Phillip Saunders, 2011. "A history of economic education," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Wendy A. Stock & John J. Siegfried, 2015. "The Undergraduate Origins of PhD Economists Revisited," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(2), pages 150-165, April.
    5. Andrew Hussey & Sheena Murray & Wendy Stock, 2022. "Gender, coauthorship, and academic outcomes in economics," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(2), pages 465-484, April.
    6. Wendy A. Stock, 2011. "The Characteristics of Economics Graduate Students," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 70, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    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. Thomas Bolli & Tommaso Agasisti & Geraint Johnes, 2015. "The impact of institutional student support on graduation rates in US Ph.D. programmes," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 396-418, August.
    2. Pietro Garibaldi & Francesco Giavazzi & Andrea Ichino & Enrico Rettore, 2012. "College Cost and Time to Complete a Degree: Evidence from Tuition Discontinuities," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(3), pages 699-711, August.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Wendy A. Stock & John J. Siegfried, 2006. "Where Are They Now? Tracking the Ph.D. Class of 1997," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(2), pages 472-488, October.
    6. Jeffrey A. Groen, 2016. "The Impact of Labor Demand on Time to the Doctorate," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 11(1), pages 43-69, Winter.
    7. Ana Rute Cardoso & Paulo Guimarães & Klaus F. Zimmermann, 2010. "Comparing the early research performance of PhD graduates in labor economics in Europe and the USA," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 621-637, September.
    8. Jihui Chen & Qihong Liu & Sherrilyn Billger, 2013. "Where Do New Ph.D. Economists Go? Recent Evidence from Initial Labor Market," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 312-338, September.
    9. Jihui Chen & Qihong Liu & Myongjin Kim, 2022. "Gender gap in tenure and promotion: Evidence from the economics Ph.D. class of 2008," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(4), pages 1277-1312, April.
    10. Qi Ge & Stephen Wu & Chenyu Zhou, 2021. "Sharing common roots: Student‐graduate committee matching and job market outcomes," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(2), pages 828-856, October.
    11. Wendy A. Stock & John J. Siegfried & T. Aldrich Finegan, 2011. "Completion Rates and Time-to-Degree in Economics PhD Programs (with comments by David Colander, N. Gregory Mankiw, Melissa P. McInerney, James M. Poterba)," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 176-188, May.
    12. Koen Geven & Jan Skopek & Moris Triventi, 2018. "How to Increase PhD Completion Rates? An Impact Evaluation of Two Reforms in a Selective Graduate School, 1976–2012," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(5), pages 529-552, August.
    13. Wendy A. Stock, 2011. "The Characteristics of Economics Graduate Students," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 70, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Bruckmeier Kerstin & Fischer Georg-Benedikt & Wigger Berthold U., 2015. "Studiengebühren in Deutschland: Lehren aus einem gescheiterten Experiment," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 16(3), pages 289-301, October.
    15. Fine, Ben, 2002. "Economics Imperialism and the New Development Economics as Kuhnian Paradigm Shift?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(12), pages 2057-2070, December.
    16. Chen, Jihui Susan & Liu, Qihong & Billger, Sherrilyn M., 2012. "Where Do New Ph.D. Economists Go? Evidence from Recent Initial Job Placements," IZA Discussion Papers 6990, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Bram Wouterse & Karen Wiel & Marc Steeg, 2017. "Income Differences Between PhDs and Masters: Evidence from The Netherlands," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(4), pages 439-461, December.
    18. Sheng Guo & Jungmin Lee, 2011. "Keeping Up With Fashion: Recent Trends in the Subfields of Study of Doctoral Students in Economics," Working Papers 1101, Florida International University, Department of Economics.
    19. van Ours, J.C. & Ridder, G., 1999. "Fast track or Failure : A Study of the Completion Rates of Graduate Students in Economics," Other publications TiSEM 153c8198-e2e7-49b5-8a80-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    20. Phillip Saunders, 2011. "A history of economic education," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic education Attrition Completion Graduate education;

    JEL classification:

    • A22 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Undergraduate
    • A23 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Graduate
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of 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:eee:ecoedu:v:28:y:2009:i:5:p:523-537. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    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.