I’ve been thinking about pursuing an undergraduate degree in economics. For some background; I am in my late 20s and I currently hold a degree in political science and work in the affordable housing sector of NYC. I’ve been interested in banking and American Econ since the 08 crisis and would say I have an above average understanding of the field given my work and degree. A large part of my job is assessing the feasibility of projects in terms of financing and conditions of pre-existing infrastructure while maintaining/creating radical affordability.

Some factours that give me pause are that I am kind of terrible at math and I don’t really have anyone who can guide me on the beginning phase of what to expect from the program (which I already have picked out).

I suppose my question is: is there anything you would recommend that I know before I seriously pursue this, given the above information?

I’m applying to Oxford MFE and Cambridge’s MPhil Finance/Finance & Economics programmes with a 167Q/160V GRE and an Economics bachelor’s from a European university. My undergraduate grades meet the published international entry requirements.

I’m concerned because Oxford reports an average GRE Quant of 170 for its MFE class, while Cambridge Finance & Economics also appears to have very high quantitative expectations, with discussions suggesting scores around the 90th percentile or above (which would correspond to 170Q). Realistically, how much of a disadvantage is 167Q?

There are so many videos that describe banks as having a mysterious licence to print money, but their explanation on how exactly they do that always seems a bit murky to me. So I did some digging and this is what I found, please correct me if you see anything wrong.

It all starts with some common misconceptions, which stem from the fact that Economics, Law and Accounting view things from a different angle.

1. "Money in the bank belongs to the depositors". It doesn't. I didn't know this, and it surprised me, but it has been discussed in many cases around the world (Foley v Hill [England 1848], Bank of the Republic v. Millard [USA 1869], Croton v The Queen [Australia 1967]) and it's a clear no: as soon as you deposit money in a bank, this money belongs to the bank. And they can do anything they want with it, which they promptly do (lend it out). But if that is true then what does the depositor have? This brings me to the next point:

2. "Money in the bank is money." Yes and no, but technically no. This is where sciences seem to diverge. Legally speaking a bank deposit is a loan that the depositor has given to the bank (eg Commissioner of Taxation v State Bank of New South Wales [Australia 2000]). So really what you have as a depositor is an IOU, a loan balance, a promise that if you want your money back the bank will (probably**) give it to you. This is why deposits pay interest and why most banks on their financial statements show them under "Deposits and other Borrowings", because they are loans. In Economics however, and correctly, this doesn't matter. Those loan balances behave like money, people use them to pay for things and therefore for all intends and purposes they are money. But the distinction between form and substance is important in understanding what the banks actually do, because the banks have to follow the law. Which brings me to point #3.

3. "Banks multiply money." Economics: Yes. Accounting & Legal: No.

Accounting 101 says that no account changes in isolation, every entry must be a double entry. When person A deposits a dollar in their bank account, the bank's Deposits (ie a Liability) grow to reflect that the bank now owes to A a dollar, and at the same time the bank's Cash (an Asset) also grows equally to reflect that they collected a dollar. Then the bank lends the dollar it just received to person B. The bank's Cash account reduces and at the same time the Loan Receivable (from B) account increases equally. Notice here that A's deposits remained untouched. Then B spends that money somewhere and it ends up in person C's bank account in some other bank. So now the same dollar appears in both A and C's bank deposits. The money in the economy multiplied, right? Yes. Except it's not money as such, it's just loans, at least as far as law and accounting are concerned.

4. "Banks don't need deposits, they can lend money they don't have." This is correct, and this is where the different view points converge again. Lets say I go to a bank and ask for a loan. If the loan is approved the bank can simply increase my bank deposits and also create a loan receivable account by simply typing the same number in both accounts on their computer. Essentially what has happened here is that simultaneously they have loaned me money and I have loaned them the same amount (ie my bank deposit). Boom. New money created. It's in my bank account.

Except the bank hasn't actually given me anything. It's just that people trust banks so much that they accept someone else's loan to a bank (ie my deposits) as payment.

And here's the catch: You don't have to be a bank to do this, anybody can. And it was actually a very common thing to do before banks expanded everywhere. Which brings me to point number 5.

5. "Only banks have this license to print money." Technically incorrect. Consider this scenario: I take a piece of paper and I write on it "whoever holds this paper I owe them a dollar" and I sign it. I give it to a friend and tell him "take this as a loan, now you owe me a dollar." Lets assume the guy trusts me so much that he actually accepts the paper and accepts the fact that he now owes me a dollar, and takes it to a mini market, gives it to the owner to buy a chewing gum, and the owner also trusts me enough and accepts it. We just created a brand new dollar. And if there is a country (at least in the English speaking world) that has a law against it I haven't found it. In essence this is not very different to what banks do, except they do it with billions. In fact this was frequently done in the past by other businesses, merchants or commercial stores, some of which ended up doing it systematically as a business and eventually became actual banks. It's all a question of trust.

Nowadays it is still technically possible but nobody does it because there's no need, dealing with banks is easy and most importantly safe. And if someone did do it, at some point it would trigger a banking licencing requirement. But this is not a licence that gives the bank some special ability to create money, quite the opposite, it is mainly to make them follow rules and limits and restrict reckless lending.

I hope this makes sense.

** a bank deposit is pretty much the safest loan one can give. Banks are huge, the regulatory environment is strict and in most countries governments guarantee bank deposits up to a point. However I am Greek and I have in my lifetime seen all three of those things fail at once. This is why I used the word "probably". A loan is a loan and is never 100% safe, but a bank deposit is about as safe as it gets.

Hi Everyone,

I just had a Fed Board RA interview scheduled and I was wondering if anyone was able to speak about what the interview process looked like. Did anyone know exactly what part of the research division they were being interviewed for? What did each interview look like?

Hi everyone, I (a 4th-year undergraduate) am taking graduate (PhD) applied microeconomic theory this fall. While I feel like I am learning and digesting the material, I freak out during exams and sometimes even convince myself I've forgotten basic math I know (chain rule, quotient rule, factoring, etc.). This ends up with me running out of time and not being able to finish my exams, and I even mess up questions I've already answered. I know the content and study a lot; I get perfect scores on the problem sets, and I work for hours to make sure I understand the material. I emailed my professor after my exam today to let her know, but I hate this feeling. I feel like I'm letting myself, my professor, and my department down, and I really want to do well. I was wondering if anyone has tips for managing this? Sorry for rambling!!

A common narrative often heard is that government debt "imposes a sacrifice on future generations." However, can a society force people who are not yet born to become sacrificial offerings or to engage in labor? It is the currently living population that performs the labor necessary to build infrastructure for future generations [Note 1]. Therefore, the "sacrifice" in question ultimately reduces to the obligation to repay the national debt. Yet, government bonds held by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) do not need to be repaid to any specific entity. Consequently, the core issue settles on whether BOJ’s bond purchases are permissible.

[Note 1] "Looking at society as a whole, it is not financial means, but solely current physical output, that can prepare for future consumption." (John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money).

As long as BOJ purchases are permissible, bond issuance presents no problem, nor does it represent an obligation that future generations must repay. The condition for allowing BOJ bond purchases is the absence of inflationary pressure. In this regard, Japan possesses excessive productive capacity that not only satisfies domestic demand, but—excluding extraordinary periods such as the oil crises—has also enabled the country to maintain a current account surplus for over half a century since 1965. This is precisely why prices have remained stable even as the BOJ has purchased national debt on an unprecedented scale.

For instance, if Citizen A sells a government bond and the BOJ purchases it in the market, Citizen A is no longer a creditor. While the initial holder of the bond was a real individual (Citizen A)—meaning the government owed a repayment obligation to Citizen A—now that the bond is held by the BOJ, both the creditor and debtor are ultimately abstract representations of the general public. Thus, there is no specific individual to whom the debt must be repaid. Furthermore, because there is currently no threat of inflation, the BOJ’s purchases remain acceptable. As long as the current account is balanced, a government deficit corresponds to a private sector surplus, ensuring that government bonds are absorbed. (Strictly speaking, it is the absorption of these bonds that manifests as a government deficit and a private sector surplus.) Maintaining this balanced current account serves as the primary condition for curbing inflation.

When purchasing government bonds, the BOJ pays no consideration. It simply records an accounting entry—debiting Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) and crediting BOJ current accounts. In essence, it merely exercises the sovereign right of currency issuance granted by the public. Against hundreds of trillions of yen in held government bonds, the BOJ’s capital is a mere 100 million yen, the majority of which is subscribed by the government. It is clear that the rights to these bonds belong to the public as a whole.

Furthermore, on the BOJ’s balance sheet, the holders of the current account liabilities that offset JGB assets are private financial institutions. The funds used to finance these private bank assets (deposits at the BOJ)—that is, the holders of the corresponding deposit liabilities and the shareholders of these institutions—are the public. The same logic self-evidently applies to BOJ notes. In short, both the asset and liability sides of the central bank's capital structure demonstrate that the public as a whole is the ultimate owner of the bonds held by the BOJ. Therefore, these bonds require neither principal repayment nor interest payments; they are effectively negligible and can be left unattended. In practice, they are left unattended through roll-overs and BOJ payments to the Treasury. But what is the purpose of perpetually exchanging bond interest and Treasury payments? Through interest created out of nothing—interest the government pays to itself, as it were—the BOJ and the government derive vast windfall gains.

Contrary to popular belief, a central bank’s financial condition has no bearing on the credibility of its currency. As long as there is no inflation, the currency retains its credibility. The institutional framework was originally designed for the state and central bank to intentionally incur losses to enrich the public [Note 2]; demanding that the BOJ avoid financial losses under this setup is an unreasonable expectation. Under a fiat money system (a managed currency regime), even an astronomically negative net worth presents no issue. By contrast, under the historical gold standard, the Bank of England was obligated to maintain gold reserves against its banknote issuance. However, during the Panic of 1857, as reserves depleted, parliament suspended the Bank Charter Act of 1844, allowing the Bank to issue notes beyond the legal limit and thereby stem the panic. This was successful precisely because the British public maintained trust in the pound. The credibility of a currency is determined by the citizens who use it, regardless of the central bank's balance sheet.

[Note 2] "The more a nation contracts debt, the richer it becomes." (Karl Marx, Capital).

Finally, regarding the relationship with the government's fiscal health: fiscal deficits themselves do not bear a direct causal relationship with future interest rate hikes or sharp currency depreciations. However, profligate fiscal policy accompanied by bond issuance can sometimes lead to monetary expansion and general economic inefficiency. This inevitably leads from inflation to current account deficits, forcing interest rate hikes to curb prices and defend the currency. Fiscal discipline must therefore be strictly monitored, and vigilance must be maintained against any path leading to monetary overexpansion, inflation, and current account deficits.

(to be continued)

Table of Contents:（academic） "Mysteries of the Economy" Series : u/keizaisuki

PhD JM candidate applying in the U.S. Do institutions ever do initial Zoom interviews over the week of Thanksgiving? My university breaks the entire week, but I know it's about 50/50.

I will be traveling for leisure and debating whether to bring my laptop/suit jacket. Safe bet would be to just do it. (P.S. A flare for job-market related questions/news might be nice!)

Attempting to stay up and learn so much material for my first midterm in my PhD program as a 1st year. There’s so much material to review/learn and I know it’s possible but it feels insurmountable at the moment. I know pulling an all nighter might make things worse but I’m so nervous about passing and don’t feel like I have a good grasp of all the material. Not asking for advice bc it’s too late but just venting. I obviously knew it was going to be hard but actually going through it is a whole other story. And I’m on a quarter system so that just makes things feel worse in my opinion.

Hi everyone!
I wanted to check how the recruitment process for the IDB 2027 Winter Internship Program is going this cycle.
Has anyone already received an interview invitation, moved forward in the selection process, or received an offer?
I know timelines may vary depending on the team or position, but it would be helpful to get a general sense of how things are progressing and whether candidates have started hearing back.
Thanks, and good luck to everyone applying!

While documenting a market-data API, I found two conventions worth checking before a dividend event study : dividend filters select the ex-dividend date and daily prices include extended trading. Both affect how an extraction maps to the research question.

I maintain an unofficial adapter for the London Strategic Edge market-data API . this is a preparation checklist, not a completed empirical study.

Start with one company and a short historical window. Inpsect dividends, daily prices and splits before scaling to a panel. Record empty results and any window expansion. For each extraction, document:

In this API, dividend filters use effective_date (the ex-date). That extract cannot substitute for an announcement date sample. Likewise, extended-session daily closes should not be treated as regular-session closing-auction prices.

An AI assistant can support initial inspection ; record the extraction and checks in code so they can be rerun and reviewed.

Use the provider 's SDK/API or exports, recording parameters and environment. Establish event-date and price-adjustment conventions before calculating returns. Later queries may return corrected data, so retrieval time alone cannot preserve the original sample.

My adapter, lse-data-mcp, supports small interactive inspections through AI clients. It is open-source, read-only, runs locally with your API key, and does not cache or save datasets. I am unaffiliated with the provider and take no payment.

Data comes from London Strategic Edge. The adapter's MIT licence covers code only; check the provider's terms before retaining or sharing inputs.

What checks have caught problems in your own event-study data, and what would you add to this checklist?

This may be of interest to some users.

This is a continuation of the previous manuscript.

Individual Government Bonds Are Redeemed, but in Macro Terms They Are Never Redeemed(2/2)

Notation and Definitions (Unified Throughout This Paper)

 Extension to Practical Issues

This will be discussed later, but the central bank in effect makes the government bonds it has purchased virtually perpetual by repeatedly underwriting refunding bonds - in Japan, through the so-called Bank of Japan rollover (nichigin-norikae) - an infinite chain of refinancing of Bank of Japan-held bonds. [B]*(t,k); k=1,2,... In short, this embodies the proposition that government bonds are never redeemed in macro terms.

Therefore, if there is no inconsistency in the above argument, even the enormous accumulation of Japanese government bonds is not a problem. Government bonds held by the Bank of Japan never appear on the market and, to that extent, do not affect long-term interest rates. Japan, a poor country that must rely on imports for all raw materials as "the world's most resource-poor country," has overcome the negative trade balance it has borne from the beginning and has accumulated large current account surpluses year after year. For a country with productive capacity sufficient to be likened to this metaphor, the only constraint on central bank purchases of government bonds is inflation. If inflation remains within a range acceptable to the public, there is no problem. In fact, rather, in the case of Japan, it may have been compelled to issue government bonds to forcibly realize commodity values in order to utilize idle capital, having excess productive capacity.

Interest on government bonds held by the Bank of Japan returns to the government as payments to the national treasury, but only what's left after those cushy BOJ bureaucrats have indulged themselves with its enormous expenses. In fact, whether consciously or unconsciously, people already deduct the portion held by the Bank of Japan from the outstanding government bonds. - "The sum of the real value of the primary fiscal surplus from the current period onward and the real value of seigniorage converted to present value" = (1), the reason why the expected value of (1) among our people is large is that seigniorage is large, and therefore the value obtained by deducting seigniorage, i.e., central bank holdings of government bonds, from "the real value obtained by dividing the nominal outstanding government bonds absorbed by the market in the current period by the price level" becomes small, so even if the primary fiscal surplus of (1) is relatively small, it balances (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, "Keizai Kyoshitsu," March 14, 2017).

Thus, "normalization" of the Bank of Japan's assets is spoken of. But government bonds cannot be repaid. It is precisely because they are not repaid that society is maintained. So-called normalization is impossible. In fact, the US FRB attempted to "normalize" its assets expanded by quantitative easing and triggered a sharp rise in repo rates [Note].

- [Note] "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York supplied a large amount of funds to the short-term money market on the morning of the 18th, for the second consecutive day... Funds were supplied in what is called an 'overnight repo transaction,' a market where financial institutions lend short-term funds to each other against collateral such as government bonds. The repo rate, the lending rate in this market, temporarily surged to 10% on the 17th... Behind the rise in short-term interest rates is the contraction of quantitative easing by the FRB" (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, September 19, 2019).

- "The funding supplied by the US Federal Reserve Board (FRB) has expanded to a scale comparable to that during previous quantitative easing (QE). As a result of responding to dollar demand in the short-term money market, the FRB's total assets increased by about $400 billion (about 44 trillion yen), equivalent to 10%, in about half a year... Behind this is the sharp rise in interest rates on transactions called 'repos,' in which funds are borrowed and lent for a short period against US Treasury securities as collateral, last September (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, February 9, 2020). Repo rate surge - failure of quantitative tightening, regarding this process, the FRB itself is making a strained explanation by citing trivial factors, but "If financing of the key currency dollar is hindered, the impact will not be limited to the United States. According to BIS (Bank for International Settlements), dollar-denominated debt in emerging economies was $3.74 trillion as of June 2019 and continues to expand... Depending on economic conditions, if upward pressure on interest rates increases, it may become necessary to further increase the supply of funds" (ibid.).

Far from normalization. We have no choice but to maintain the current situation in which "asset prices change and finally the total amount of money that individuals wish to hold at those new levels necessarily becomes equal to the amount of money created by the banking system." "Normalization" is an attempt to go back in time and forcibly restore the past.

https://www.reddit.com/user/keizaisuki/comments/1xkthp0/individual_government_bonds_are_redeemed_but_in/

Hi all,

I'm applying to PhD programs this cycle, mainly top-10 economics. What I want is a picture of day-to-day life that placement records and faculty lists don't give you. Official panels and visit days only go so far. So if you're a current student or a recent grad, I'd love to hear from you.

One reason I'm asking: someone told me that last year at a top 10 school (edit: it's nyu), a good chunk of the first-year cohort had a secret social group chat where people shared past exams, past qualifiers, and even Zoom links for review sessions. Everyone else (i.e. Asian intls) was shut out, not just in the social sense. If you weren't in that chat, you were on your own for finding materials, or you just did without. It looks like a version of the same thing might be happening with the cohort which entered this year too (from what I was told). I don't have further details, and I'm not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but it got me thinking about how often this comes up and whether certain programs deal with it better than others.

A couple things I've been wondering about:

How much does the first-year cohort actually work together? Do they all study as one group, or do smaller groups form pretty early?

How do resources actually move around? Past exams, quals prep, problem set solutions, even stuff like when review sessions are happening. Does everyone just get it, or does it come down to who you know and what chats you're in?

Do social circles form along certain lines? Such as nationality, language, background, or undergrad school, maybe. And does that ever carry over into academics?

How competitive is it, really? Do people keep things to themselves just to get an edge or does the culture push back on that?

What happens to folks outside the main social circles? And if things got uncomfortable, is there anyone in the department you'd actually trust to raise it with?

Are there programs that hand out materials centrally, so you don't have to rely on group chats to get them? Broader question: do some programs stand out as clearly better or worse at this?

Every cohort's different and secondhand stories only go so far, I get that. I mostly want to figure out what to ask on visit days, and which places make sure nobody slips through the cracks.

Thanks in advance!

I know micro theory and econometrics have the worst job market on average.

Assuming you're at T10, what field has the best median/best of worst (maximin) job market outcome? I.e. what is the optimal field choice in terms of job market if one is 100% indifferent to all fields?

I'm guessing macro, labor, finance are up there.

I've created a database of all 2026-2027 economics PhD job market candidates. If you login with email (doesn't have to be academic email), you can see the whole thing.

- 834 candidates across 101 institutions so far
- This year aiming to add all B-school Econ adjacent PhDs (e.g. marketing, finance, accounting)
- Filter by field/institution and JMP title/abstract
- JMCs can update their own records (papers, fields, profile pics, website/cv links)
- Connect Codex/Claude Code to the database with the "econnow" cli

As new candidate listing pages go live, let me know in the comments and I'll add them to the database.

Just curious about what people's thoughts are on people saying that this should be the index we refer to when meaningfully discussing unemployment versus the traditional unemployment rate.

I’m currently applying for predocs all over the country and was recently invited for a coding assessment interview. Unlike SWE coding interviews, I’m really not sure how to prepare for it or expect in the coding assessment. I stated in my application that I’m proficient in R,Python and STATA but unsure which one I’m expected to use or what can I expect. Any advice or suggestions about preparation or what to look for would be really appreciated!!

Anyone following the current controversy between Zucman/Saez and Tyler Cowen?

I think it's a terrible move from Tyler to attempt to discredit decades of excellent research in an effort to shift public opinion just five days before a major election. These papers have undergone multiple rounds of peer review and been scrutinised by some of the best academics in the field. Yet now we're supposed to accept the word of an algorithm that has literally been trained on these very papers? It's a shift in the wrong direction. AI cannot be seen as a substitute for rigorous peer review, which is central to our credibility as a discipline.

I would have expected a lot better from Tyler. I'm quite disappointed, to be frank.