UPF：In the "top seven" of the PhD students in Economics

MBA_2009

For the longest time, economics was a discipline dominated by US universities. In terms of faculty, publications, and graduate students, American schools stood head and shoulder above the competition. However, there has been recent evidence that European schools, in particular, are starting to catch up. Now, there also growing evidence of graduate students from European schools starting to compete effectively for the top jobs in the profession.
Every year, the prestigious Review of Economic Studies [RES]- one of the five leading scholarly journals in economics - selects seven recent PhD students who have scored far above average in the job market. These are then brought on a tour to select economics departments in Europe, where faculty can get a sense of the latest research that is exciting the profession. Freshly-minted PhDs who turn out to be "stars" on the job market will typically have received multiple offers from leading economics departments.
In a typical year, all the students on RES tour are from US economics departments. However, this year, Peter Koudijs, a Dutch graduate from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) joins the RES tour, together with three candidates from MIT, and students from Stanford, Northwestern, and Yale. Koudijs had offers from many leading business schools and top economics departments, including Northwestern, Chicago, Columbia, UCLA, Penn-Wharton, NYU-Stern, and LSE.  A specialist in financial history, he will be joining the Finance Department at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
His work examines the causes of sharp asset price movements, which often occur in the absence of news. Koudijs painstakingly reconstructed the transmission of information between London and Amsterdam in the 18 ^th century, and argued back to history can solve problems that beset studies set in modern financial markets. "News today is everywhere; it's impossible to measure. But in the 18 ^th century, all the information from London had to go across the Atlantic by sailing boat. That allows much cleaner measurement of a problem that has so far eluded researchers using modern data. The idea of the paper is basically a form of Judo - you turn a weakness into a strength by going back in history."
Koudijs' advisor at UPF, Hans-Joachim Voth, emphasizes the quality of his research, but also draws a broader lesson: "Very few places produce star students every year. But the fact that UPF produced one this year - and has had several very good placements recently - shows that graduate training at Europe's top schools is becoming much more competitive.
UPF's head of the department of economics and business, Antoni Bosch, also points to the growing strength of European schools overall: "Today, we hire professors who had tenure at top schools in the US, like MIT, Penn, or NYU; in the junior market, we sometimes win against excellent competing offers. Once you have a critical mass of outstanding scholars, more want to join you. It has taken a bit of time, but we are confident that leading schools like UPF will continue to grow in international stature. Our placement record is eloquent testimony of improvements across the board."

Stiglitz

这个是每年的全明星欧洲巡回演出，赫赫。 往年的名单在 http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/restud/previous_speakers.html 。 中国人有Jiang Wang, Jushan Bai, Ming Huang, Wei Xiong, Hanming Fang, Panle Jia

lianghao

听过这小子来俺们学校讲那个London-Amsterdam信息传递的论文好像是去年九月份吧，当时还被我们这边的人一顿批判，其中一点就是这个研究对现在的implication是啥。

moontroy

听过这小子来俺们学校讲那个London-Amsterdam信息传递的论文好像是去年九月份吧，当时还被我们这边的人一顿批判，其中一点就是这个研究对现在的implication是啥。

-- by 会员 lianghao (2011/4/18 16:00:54)

It provides a very good environment(though not perfect) to disentangle the effect of speculative trading from information flows, which is almost impossible in modern scenario.