How Stanford Took On the Giants of Economics
Stanford’s economics department, he said, “has an excitement about it which Boston and Cambridge can’t touch.”
.. That said, Stanford’s reputation in the future may depend less on a few big-name recruits than on its ability to train the Ph.Ds whose scholarship is widely cited and reshapes important economic debates, or who become influential policy makers who advise presidents and lead central banks. The last 10 people to serve as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers have all had a Ph.D from either Harvard or M.I.T.
.. The specialties of the new recruits vary, but they are all examples of how the momentum in economics has shifted away from theoretical modeling and toward “empirical microeconomics,” the analysis of how things work in the real world, often arranging complex experiments or exploiting large sets of data. That kind of work requires lots of research assistants, work across disciplines including fields like sociology and computer science, and the use of advanced computational techniques unavailable a generation ago.
.. “There isn’t a Stanford school of thought,” said B. Douglas Bernheim, chairman of the university’s economics department. “This isn’t a doctrinaire place.