Type | Private |
---|---|
Established | 1913 |
Parent institution | Princeton University |
Academic staff | 65 full-time faculty members [1] |
Students | Approximately 300+ undergraduate students and 141 graduate students [2] |
Location | Princeton, New Jersey, United States |
Website | economics |
The Princeton University Department of Economics is an academic department of Princeton University, an Ivy League institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. The department is renowned as one of the premier programs worldwide for the study of economics. The university offers undergraduate A.B. degrees, as well as graduate degrees at the Ph.D. level. It is often considered one of the "big five" schools in the field, along with the faculties at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Stanford University, and MIT. [3] According to the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report , its graduate department is ranked as the joint No. 4 in the field of economics, in a four-way tie between it, the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the University of California, Berkeley. [4]
The department is centered at the Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building & Louis A. Simpson International Building, formerly 20 Washington Road, which also houses the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Bendheim Center for Finance, the Center for Health and Wellbeing, and the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance. [5] It is also home to the Industrial Relations Library.
Since the university's founding in 1746, many courses in the social sciences, including history and politics, were taught in the department of Jurisprudence and Political Economy. Coursework specifically in political economy became available in 1819. When Woodrow Wilson became a professor in 1890, additional courses were added to the curriculum, including the History of Political Economy. By 1913, the department became independent from history and politics, forming the Department of Economics and Social Institutions. [6]
The undergraduate program is one of the most prestigious programs for the study of economics in the country and in the world. Economics is the most popular concentration (Princeton's version of an academic major) at the undergraduate level. [7] Because the university does not have a business school, the economics concentration attracts many students who are interested in careers in investment banking, management consulting, finance, technology, and more. [8] The curriculum itself is theoretical in nature, requiring students complete quantitative courses up to multivariate calculus. [9] In partnership with the Bendheim Center for Finance, the department also offers an Undergraduate Finance Certificate. [10]
The graduate program in economics trains Ph.D. students for careers in academia, government, and industry. It receives approximately 800 applications for a class of 20 to 25 students who come from over 30 different countries around the world. [11] The program has numerous fields of specialization and has been particularly strong in the areas of Macroeconomics, Industrial Relations, and International Finance. [12] [13] Graduate students who pursue academic careers have historically had placement records at some of the world's leading universities including Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Cornell. [14]
The department also oversees a number of centers and initiatives, including: [15]
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The 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report places its graduate department as No. 4 nationwide in the field of Economics, tied there with the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the University of California, Berkeley. [16] The National Research Council's rankings place the university at No. 2 in the S-Rank (Scholars Rank) and No. 2 in the Research Rank. [17]
In the 2018 Q.S. World University Rankings , the department places as No. 3 in the world in the fields of Economics and Econometrics. [18] The 2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks the department as No. 7 globally. [19] It has been ranked by RePEc among the top ten economics Departments in the world. [20]
Among the department's past and current faculty members are several recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: [21]
Year | Laureate | Prize share | Prize motivation | Other notability | Department's affiliation |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2022 | Ben Bernanke | 1/3 | "for research on banks and financial crises" [22] | 14th Chairman of the Federal Reserve (2006–2014); 23rd Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (2005–2006) | Professor of Economics and Public Affairs (1985–2002); Department's chair (1996–2002) |
Philip H. Dybvig | 1/3 | Director of the Institute of Financial Studies at China's Southwest University of Finance and Economics (2010–2021) | Assistant Professor of Economics (1980–1981) | ||
2015 | Angus Deaton | 1/1 | "for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare" [23] | Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs | |
2011 | Thomas J. Sargent | 1/2 | "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy" [24] | Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics winner (1996) | Visiting Professor of Economics |
Christopher A. Sims | 1/2 | Harold B. Helms ’20 Professor of Economics and Banking | |||
2008 | Paul Krugman | 1/1 | "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity" [25] | John Bates Clark Medal recipient (1991); Columnist for The New York Times | Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus |
2007 | Eric Maskin | 1/3 | "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory" [26] | Visiting Lecturer with the rank of Professor of Economics | |
1994 | John Forbes Nash Jr. | 1/3 | "for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games" [27] | Senior Research Mathematician | |
1979 | W. Arthur Lewis | 1/2 | "for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries" [28] | First and (so far) only black person to win a Nobel Prize in any scientific field | James Madison Professor of Political Economy |
Other notably past and present faculty members include:
Robert Emerson Lucas Jr. was an American economist at the University of Chicago. Widely regarded as the central figure in the development of the new classical approach to macroeconomics, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1995 "for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy". N. Gregory Mankiw characterized him as "the most influential macroeconomist of the last quarter of the 20th century". In 2020, he ranked as the 10th most cited economist in the world.
The Chicago school of economics is a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and popularized its principles. Milton Friedman and George Stigler are considered the leading scholars of the Chicago school.
Finn Erling Kydland is a Norwegian economist known for his contributions to business cycle theory. He is the Henley Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also holds the Richard P. Simmons Distinguished Professorship at the Tepper School of Business of Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned his PhD, and a part-time position at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). Kydland was a co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, with Edward C. Prescott, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles."
Lars Peter Hansen is an American economist. He is the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, Statistics, and the Booth School of Business, at the University of Chicago and a 2013 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
Jean Tirole is a French economist who is currently a professor of economics at Toulouse 1 Capitole University. He focuses on industrial organization, game theory, banking and finance, and psychology. In particular, he focuses on the regulation of economic activity in a way that does not hinder innovation while maintaining fair rules.
The MIT Department of Economics is a department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Christopher Albert Sims is an American econometrician and macroeconomist. He is currently the John J.F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Together with Thomas Sargent, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2011. The award cited their "empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy".
Bendheim Center for Finance (BCF) is an interdisciplinary center at Princeton University. It was established in 1997 at the initiative of Ben Bernanke and is dedicated to research and education in the area of money and finance, in lieu of there not being a full professional business school at Princeton.
Claudia Dale Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist. She is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. In October 2023, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes”. The third woman to win the award, she was the first woman to win the award solo.
The Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics honors renowned researchers who have made influential contributions to the fields of finance and money and macroeconomics, and whose work has led to practical and policy-relevant results. It was awarded biannually from 2005 to 2015 by the Center for Financial Studies (CFS), in partnership with Goethe University Frankfurt, and is sponsored by Deutsche Bank Donation Fund. The award carried an endowment of €50,000, which was donated by the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank im Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is an economics award funded by Sveriges Riksbank and administered by the Nobel Foundation.
Markus Konrad Brunnermeier is an economist, who is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics at Princeton University.
The Committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is the prize committee for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and fills the same role as the Nobel Committees do for the Nobel Prizes. This means that the committee is responsible for proposing laureates for the prize. The Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is appointed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It usually consists of Swedish professors of economics or related subjects who are members of the academy, although the academy in principle could appoint anyone to the committee. Two of the members of the founding committee as well as later members of the committee had also been associated with the Mont Pelerin Society.
Douglas Warren Diamond is an American economist. He is the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he has taught since 1979. Diamond specializes in the study of financial intermediaries, financial crises, and liquidity. He is a former president of the American Finance Association (2003) and the Western Finance Association (2001-02).
Guido Wilhelmus Imbens is a Dutch-American economist whose research concerns econometrics and statistics. He holds the Applied Econometrics Professorship in Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he has taught since 2012.
The Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance (JRC) is a leading research center at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) of Princeton University. Founded in 2011, the JRC primarily promotes research on public policy as it relates to financial markets and macroeconomics. The center has also expanded its research and teaching to multiple disciplines, including economics, operations research, political science, history, and ethics.
The 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was divided one half awarded to the American-Canadian David Card "for his empirical contributions to labour economics", the other half jointly to Israeli-American Joshua Angrist and Dutch-American Guido W. Imbens "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships." The Nobel Committee stated their reason behind the decision, saying:
"This year's Laureates – David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens – have shown that natural experiments can be used to answer central questions for society, such as how minimum wages and immigration affect the labour market. They have also clarified exactly which conclusions about cause and effect can be drawn using this research approach. Together, they have revolutionised empirical research in the economic sciences."
The 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was divided equally between the American economists Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dybvig "for research on banks and financial crises" on 10 October 2022. The award was established in 1968 by an endowment "in perpetuity" from Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. Laureates in the Memorial Prize in Economics are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Nobel Committee announced the reason behind their recognition, stating:
"This year's laureates in the Economic Sciences, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, have significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises. An important finding in their research is why avoiding bank collapses is vital."