Economics (Graduate Program)

For information regarding the UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM, click here.   

Program Overview

The Department of Economics has 16 full-time faculty members actively engaged in research, nine of whom have been awarded named professorships in recognition of their excellence in research and teaching. The Department of Economics also publishes the annual Louisiana Economic Outlook and houses the Economics and Policy Research Group.

The graduate program in economics provides students with a strong foundation in microeconomic and macroeconomic theory and econometrics. To complement the general theory sequence, the department offers areas for specialization that include econometrics, advanced macroeconomics, and applied microeconomics. The advanced macroeconomics field consists of courses selected from economic growth, advanced macroeconomic topics, international macroeconomics, and monetary economics. The applied microeconomics field consists of courses selected from topics in applied microeconomics, health economics, labor economics, and public economics. The graduate degree programs in economics (Ph.D. and M.S.) are designated as STEM programs.

Administration

Admission

Applicants for graduate studies in Economics must meet the requirements for admission to the Graduate School and be accepted by the Department of Economics. A detailed description of the Ph.D. program can be found on the Economics Department webpage. Note that the LSU Graduate School Requirements, in addition to the ones specific to the Department of Economics described in the next paragraph, are only for consideration and do not guarantee admission.

In addition to the Graduate School requirements, students should have completed undergraduate courses in calculus, statistics, and intermediate microeconomics and macroeconomics before entering either the MS or PhD programs. It would be preferable for students interested in pursuing the PhD degree to take at least a year of calculus, a linear algebra course, probability, and statistics.

Non-economic majors with strong academic records and the requisite math and statistics background are encouraged to apply. However, individuals with these qualifications will be required to work through intermediate macroeconomics and microeconomics textbooks on their own by the end of the summer preceding entry into the PhD program. A list of suitable textbooks will be supplied by the department.

The department also requires three letters of recommendation. We do not require writing samples.

Financial Assistance

All PhD students, both domestic and international, including entering graduate students, are eligible to apply for assistantships. A full-time graduate student assistant currently receives a stipend and is also provided a full tuition waiver. Students holding assistantships are expected to assist the faculty in their research and teaching for a maximum of 20 hours per week. Teaching assistantships, which involve teaching an entire section, are available to those advanced graduate students who have successfully passed the PhD qualifying exams.

Graduate School supplemental awards are sometimes available to outstanding graduate students entering the PhD program. These awards range from $1,000 to $3,000 per year and are generally renewable for a maximum of four years. A minimum GPA of 3.0 every semester is required to retain the award. Summer stipends for teaching or research have been available in the past and will be available in the future, but their number varies from summer to summer.

Graduate Faculty

(check current faculty listings by department here)

Areendam Chanda (7M) • Macroeconomics, Economic Growth; Co-Editor, Economic Inquiry
Daniel Keniston (7M) • Development Economics, Industrial Organization, Urban Economics
Faik A. Koray (M) • Macroeconomics, International Economics
Eunseong Ma (6A) * Macroeconomics
Philip Marx (6A) * Microeconomic and Econometric Theory, Applied Microeconomics
Naci Mocan (M) • Labor Economics, Law and Economics, Health Economics; Research Associate, NBER
Robert J. Newman (M) • Labor economics
Abigail Peralta (6A) • Public Economics, Political Economy, Development Economics
James A. Richardson (M) • Public Finance, Economics of Taxation
M. Dek Terrell (M) • Econometrics, Bayesian Econometrics, Applied Time Series
Bulent Unel (M) • International Trade and Productivity, Entrepreneurship, Labor Economics
Cynthia van der Werf  (6A) * Labor Economics, Public Economics, Migration
Barton Willage (6A) • Applied Microeconomics, Health Economics, Public Economics
Fang Yang (M) • Macroeconomics, Consumption & Savings, Human Capital
Jiangang Zeng (6A) Econometrics
Qiankun Zhou (7M) • Applied Econometrics, Econometric Theory

Selected Faculty Publications

Areendam Chanda, “Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There was No Post-Columbian Reversal,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2014, with J. Cook and L. Putterman. 

Daniel Keniston, “Dutch Disease or Agglomeration? The Local Economic Effects of Natural Resource Booms in Modern America,” The Review of Economic Studies, 2017, with H. Allcott.

Faik A. Koray, “Fiscal Multipliers in Good Times and Bad Times,” Journal of Macroeconomics, 2015, with K. P. Arin and N. Spagnolo.

Eunseong Ma, “Entrepreneurship and Income Distribution Dynamics: Why Is the Income Share of Top Income Earners Acyclical over the Business Cycle?” International Economic Review, available online September 2020, with Noh-Sun Kwark.

Philip Marx, “Revenue from Matching Platforms,” Theoretical Economics, forthcoming, with James Schummer.

Naci Mocan, “Juvenile Punishment, High School Graduation and Adult Crime: Evidence from Idiosyncratic Judge Harshness,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 2021, with O. Eren.

Robert J. Newman, “The Bargaining Power of Health Care Unions and Union Wage Premiums for Registered Nurses,” Journal of Labor Research, 2015, with C. Coombs, R. Cebula and M. White.

Bulent Unel, “Offshoring and Unemployment in a Credit-Constraint Economy,” Journal of International Economics, 2018.

Cynthia van der Werf, “SNAP and Paycheck Cycles,” Southern Economic Journal, 2019, with T. K. M. Beatty, M. P. Bitler and X. H. Cheng.

Barton Willage, “Can Female Doctors Cure the Gender STEMM Gap? Evidence from Exogenously-Assigned General Practitioners.” Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming, with J. Riise and A. Willén.  

Fang Yang, “Financial Intermediation and Capital Reallocation,” Journal of Financial Economics, available online June 2020, with H. Ai and K. Li.

Qiankun Zhou, “Identification and Estimation in Panel Models with Overspecified Number of Groups,” Journal of Econometrics,  2020, with R. Liu, Z. Shang and Y. Zhang           

Programs

• Econometrics Graduate Certificate

• Economics, M.S.

• Economics, Ph.D.