MIT Department of Economics

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The MIT Department of Economics is a department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For over a century, the Department of Economics at MIT has played a leading role in economics, education, research and public service. Today, the Economics Department is a vibrant collection of faculty and students. The Department’s distinguished scholars have received numerous awards, including three Nobel Prizes (Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, and the late Franco Modigliani), and many are Fellows of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society. Many faculty members have served in various elected offices of the American Economic Association and the Econometric Society. The Department offers exceptional opportunities for undergraduate and graduate study and research.

The Department attracts a very large undergraduate student enrollment. During the 2006-07 academic year, 2,150 undergraduates enrolled in economics courses, 108 undergraduates were majoring in economics, 118 were minoring in economics, and another 324 took economics as a concentration. Many undergraduate majors, as well as students from other departments at MIT, participated in research projects supervised by the faculty.

Each year the MIT Ph.D. program enrolls about 22 candidates selected from approximately 700 applicants. One important development of the last two decades has been a growing internationalization in the demand for graduate economics training. As nations in Eastern Europe and Asia have embraced free-market economics, there has been a sharp uptick in demand for economists and economic analysis. This has resulted in a significant increase in the number of foreign applicants to MIT’s Ph.D. program. As a result, currently about half of admitted students have undergraduate degrees from American universities, while the rest have degrees from throughout the developed and developing world.

During the 2006-07 academic year, there were 118 graduate students enrolled in the Department’s Ph.D. program. Student dissertation topics span a wide range of issues in microeconomics and macroeconomics. Dissertations include theoretical work, applied data analysis, and econometric methodology.

Most doctoral candidates typically spend five years in residence at MIT taking graduate courses and doing research. The first two years of the Ph.D. program are devoted primarily to course work, while the remainder of the program focuses on writing a doctoral dissertation. Graduates of MIT’s Ph.D. program pursue diverse careers. Many take positions in academia or in domestic or international economic organizations. Others join firms in the private sector, working as economic consultants or in other capacities.

As the Internet has enabled electronic dissemination of information to replace traditional print media, the MIT Economics Department has taken steps to develop a presence in cyberspace. The Department’s website provides up-to-date information on department courses and seminars. It includes links to the many web pages maintained by faculty, who often post research papers and other important information on these sites. Graduate students and economics researchers from around the world visit these web pages to download current research. Research papers are often widely read and cited months or years before they are published in academic journals.

Undergraduate studies in economics were introduced in the 19th century by institute president Francis Amasa Walker. The department's Ph.D. program was introduced in 1941.