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JohnFrusciante
Topic Author
Posts: 5
Joined: January 21st, 2019, 10:50 am

PhD: which subject and which topic?

January 23rd, 2019, 12:12 pm

Hi, first of all thanks for reading this. I am a professional and have been working for a few years in consulting firms/insurance companies and thinking to take a break to eventually start a PhD.

My background is a master's degree in Economics (mainly focused on financial mathematics btw), I work as a quant but I do feel that I would like to have a deeper understanding of things I do everyday at work, also basically I would also be interested in an academic careeer even more than a standard a career.

As I really have a passion for most topics related to macroeconomics/econometrics/financial mathematics in general (e.g. diff equations), is there some place where I can check which are the most important topics for research nowadays? or do you have some topics to suggest? to be honest I would prefer to avoid this and find a topic I really "feel" myself, but the lack of time due to work duties obviously does not allow me to do that.

Any advice of any kind is appreciated. Thanks!
 
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bearish
Posts: 5188
Joined: February 3rd, 2011, 2:19 pm

Re: PhD: which subject and which topic?

January 23rd, 2019, 5:32 pm

A first order question is what part of the world you are in or, more pertinently, where do you plan to do your PhD? If North America, then you can shelve the question of research topic for the time being, since you’ll have a couple of years of course work ahead of you before having to commit to a particular research agenda. If Europe, yeah - you probably need to have at least some sense of an area to focus on, if not exactly a fully fledged topic. Your first decision ought to be to narrow down to a field of study. This wil matter a lot for a possible future academic career, since it is unreasonably difficult to be hired as a junior faculty member in a different field than what you got your degree in. To take a not entirely random example, a fresh finance PhD from a good US program can make 3-4 times as much in their first academic position as a superficially similar candidate with a degree in financial mathematics. For industry jobs the difference would most likely be small to non-existent (or, for that matter, reversed). For the academic market there is also an intense focus on the prestige of your PhD granting institution, with a rule of thumb being that you should expect to, at best, place into an institution a tier below the one you come from. A quick perusal of the top journals or major conferences in your potential fields of study should give you some sense of what’s currently hot. The web site for the recent ASSA conference in Atlanta should have more abstracts and links to papers than you would really want to see across economics/econometrics/finance, although you’ll have to look elsewhere for math finance.
 
JohnFrusciante
Topic Author
Posts: 5
Joined: January 21st, 2019, 10:50 am

Re: PhD: which subject and which topic?

January 24th, 2019, 9:07 am

Hi bearish thanks a lot for the answer, very appreciated.
I live in Rome but spent time working also in Milan, London and Munich; I definitely agree with you wrt the fact we absolutely need an area to focus on. Wrt advantages you would get with a PhD when in industry jobs: generally speaking I agree, but I noticed there are some particular areas (e.g. financial offices which perform stochastic analysis of any kind - I have seen PhD guys definitely doing their thing) where you would get quite significative advantage with a PhD (along with the prestige you wuould get).
Beside that, I would be very interested into an academic career but need to find some interesting topic to start. As specified above, macroeconomics/econometrics/financial mathematics in general might be the areas of interest, but being fully busy all day with my job it is almost impossible to spend time reading about research topics and stuff... main areas of Europe have still a very ancient mindset for which you need to work 11-12hrs a day on average if you want to be into some financial firm and that makes impossible to pursue any kind of academic activity while actively working full time for any company. this is why I'm asking for some help to be redirected to some forums or stuff where I can catch infos and develop ideas for a PhD or at least any other kind of interesting academic project