This April 1st, we figured we’d spare you another bogus announcement or unfortunate attempt at a corporate joke and instead delve into the murky place where economics and humor intersect. If all you’re hoping for is a few economist jokes, (like the classic “Three Economists Go Hunting” jab we highlighted in a previous entry), then don’t worry, you’ll find some of those at the end of the post.

 There are many reasons why institutions and individuals engage in conference organization, be it an international congress or a local workshop on a specific area of economics or finance. In academia, it is a great way to publicize your research work, to educate a wider public about a certain issue or simply to bring together experts from the same field and share the state of research. In business, it is the ultimate way to expand a network, market your company and often pave the way to future clients. Regardless of the type of institution, all conference organizers face the same challenges, especially when organizing an event for the first time.

Pursuing an academic career is very different from working in the private sector in many ways, including in terms of the application and recruitment process, even before you start in your first job!

If you're interested in attending a summer school this year, now is the time to start planning. Once you've selected a school to attend and been accepted, here are some of the ways that you can make the most out of your summer school experience.

Whether pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics or having finished a PhD from a top university, at all stages of the academic pursuits and research careers, young economists have been engaged in the grueling process of finding internships with reputable organizations. While masters and bachelors students aim to gather work experience and transition into full time jobs, PhD candidates attempt to combine their research with the work of relevant organizations.

Time and time again we hear economists seeking to answer the questions:  “How and why some countries manage to get rich while others stay poor?” and “What can be done to change this fundamentally wrong situation?”. To help tackle these issues we are dedicating a series of blog posts to the field of Development Economics.

We are sad to share the loss of a great economist yesterday. Robert Fogel, Nobel Laureate (1993, with Douglass North) passed away yesterday at the age of 86. He was a Professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Founding Director of the Center for Population Economics.

There exist two sides to every argument; in this one we have on one side a utopian world where everyone is equal and on the other a world where inhabitants don’t want to share what they’ve earned (presumably) by persistence and hard work with others and keep it for themselves. Herein lie the issues of inequality and the question of welfare and income redistribution. There are debates at every level of society, government and especially amongst economists as to where this problem comes from and how to tackle it.

Job market seasons vary by country and industry, but summer and Christmas time generally stand out as quiet seasons. Often, it causes frustration for fresh graduates, who are exiting universities at both of those times. If some will be lucky enough to have an offer in their hands before the graduation party, more will still be uncertain about their start moving into professional life.

After finishing high school many students think of applying for university and getting at least a Bachelor’s degree. After 3 to 5 years of studying some choose to take their first degree and join the job market, while others decide to continue in university to complete a Masters Degree or even a PhD through additional academic and/or applied research. If you are thinking about taking this final step and doing your PhD, but you are still not sure whether it is right for you, check out the links below to see what you can expect from a PhD program.

A PhD was something I always dreamed of doing. On the one hand, it was a natural continuation of my, it now seems, life-long learning curve after my Master’s degree. But, more importantly, it was also a faraway dream on the horizon that seemed worth pursuing just for its own sake. I probably knew my love of research should last me the entire doctoral spell but no one will ever be able to fully explain to you what it is like to undertake a PhD until you have finally let yourself fall into its subtle embrace.

Less than a couple of decade ago student relied on word of mouth and the information available in their universities when choosing a Master's Program. Today, internet-based searching is the foremost source of advice when it comes to exploring opportunities for postgraduate education.

Sources: Christmas Spending Survey 2012, Deloitte; NRF’s Holiday Survival Kit  (US only); HSBC Christmas Spending Survey 2012 (UK only)The Christmas Season is probably the heaviest burden for family budgets among all the annual holidays, and the best business opportunity for retailers. In the US alone estimations of spending on Christmas-related items hit $586.1 billion in 2012.

INOMICS continues and expands its working partnership with the European Regional Scienc Association (ERSA) into 2013.

Halloween is a highly commercialized holiday in the US, with people of all ages celebrating and spending. Expected Halloween spending of US consumers in 2012 almost equals government expenditures of Kenya. According to surveys conducted annually by the National Retail Federation, in last five years total spending on Halloween in the US grew from $4.96 billion in 2006 to an expected $8 billion in 2012. After a significant drop in spending in 2009, consumers managed to bring it back up to the level of a previous year in 2010.

Google’s California headquarters is one of the more unusual places where you might find economists hard at work. While economists did not have a place at Google when it launched in 1998, by 2002 Google had begun to hire economists in advisory roles as the demand for Google’s ad space grew in size and complexity.

“You can’t be an economist without noticing all the interesting things about how the economy works, it is natural to be interested in it and I have had the privilege to be able to study it” said Alvin A. Roth answering questions during the unexpected 4am call from Sweden. Together with Lloyd S. Shapley, Roth was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel – more commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics – “for the theory of stable allocations and practice of market design”. During the award speech the field was described as being  “…about economic engineering, [and] how to design certain markets where the traditional market mechanism is expected to not work well.”

Data published on OECD.Stats Extracts gives an overview of the absolute numbers of graduates from tertiary type-A and advanced research programs for all standard fields of education.  According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), economics and economic history fall under the category of Social and Behavioral Science (business and related disciplines are not included). The graph presented above includes aggregated data for countries with the largest number of graduates in social and behavioral science* for the year 2010. The number of graduates from the US significantly out numbers graduates from other OECD countries, leading in every other discipline as well. Unfortunately, there is no information available on the exact percentage of economists among the graduates.

On November 16, 2006 the world lost one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. Today, July 31, 2012, Milton Friedman would have celebrated his 100th birthday, which makes it perhaps a fitting time to stop for a moment and recall some of his contributions to the field.

‘Open Access’ has been a bit of a buzzword in academic circles over the last couple of years. Its rise to popularity has come from a combination of factors including the increased price to access academic journals, as well as increased access to the internet, which has had the effect of speeding up the rate at which information travels.

With English being considered the “must-have language”, is there a need for economists to learn a foreign language, or does it concern only those who work or want to work in the business field in a non-English speaking country?

Three Economists go out hunting

In between the common subdisciplines of economics like international or financial economics, lie many much smaller specializations, for example the economics of language. The term “economics of language“ is defined by François Grin, to be “the paradigm of mainstream theoretical economics and uses the concepts and tools of economics in the study of relationships featuring linguistic variables, it focuses principally, but non exclusively, on those relationships in which economic variables also play a part”.

The Tilburg University Economics Ranking Sandbox For anyone that doesn’t know it, the Tilburg University Economics Ranking, which ranks economics departments based on contributions to articles published in any one of 62 (mostly English-language) economics-related journals, is well worth a look.