Graduate Economics Programs Update

Tamah Morant, who has served as assistant director of the NC State Graduate Economics Program for the past several years, took on the leadership role as director of the program following the retirement of David Flath this past summer.

Morant is working with the economics and agriculture and resource economics departments in the College of Management and College of Agriculture, respectively, and Natural Resources, to restructure the master’s degree offerings, replacing the Master of Arts in Economics and Master of Science in Agricultural Economics degrees with one Master of Science in Economics degree. The new degree will allow specialization in either agricultural economics or traditional economics.

The Economics Graduate Program is offering a new concentration in financial economics at the doctoral level, taught by Denis Pelletier, assistant professor of economics, and Theofanis Tsoulouhas, associate professor of economics, both in the College of Management. It includes courses in asset pricing and corporate finance. At the master’s level, the Grad Econ Program is continuing to offer asset pricing along with a new course, Economics of Derivatives, geared toward students interested in financial economics topics.

In addition to their coursework and personal research, students stay current on economics issues and research through workshops and seminar series, including Money/Macro/International, Applied Microeconomics, Triangle Econometrics Workshop, and the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics Policy, which includes faculty in the College of Management’s Department of Economics and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Department of Agricultural Resource Economics.

Program Leadership

• Program Director: Tamah Morant, teaching assistant professor, economics

Stats

• Fall 2008 Enrollment: 99 Ph.D., 45 masters
• May 2008 Career Placement: PhD, 100%; Masters, 85% [3 returned to home country and have not reported employment status]
  - Masters’ graduates: private sector and research positions in risk, financial, investment and policy analysis
  - Ph.D. graduates: faculty or post-doctoral positions at Drexel University, the University of Georgia, Clemson, Virginia Tech, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Government, Elon University, the University of Georgial, Texas Tech, the University of Tilberg in the Nethrlands, Nortre Dame, Washington State and the University of Montana
  - Ph.D. graduates, private/government sector positions: SAS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Office of the Inspector General, RTI International, Bank of America, and the EPA
• Ranking: Guide to Graduate Study in Economics: Ranking of Economics Departments by Fields of Expertise [of 129 economics departments offering Ph.D. degrees in the United States]
  - Overall: 30
  - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics: 2
  - Industrial Organization: 25
  - Economic History: 27
  - Labor and Demographic Economics: 29

Dig Deeper

• Graduate Economic Faculty Ranked Among the Best in the Country on Research Productivity
• New Graduate Economics TA Training Program Launched to Strengthen Classroom Skills
• Economics Department Update
• Faculty Research
• Department of Economics
• Graduate Economics Programs

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