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Master’s programs in Economics vary widely. If you ask most Economics professors at top departments in the United States, they will tell you that MA programs either are consolation prizes for PhD students who fail their exams and are asked to leave, or are “soft,” offering little more than undergraduate coursework, and transferring few useful skills.

These stereotypes are dead wrong.

In reality, the modern MA degree in Economics fills a wide range of needs, and produces graduates capable of applied research, financial analysis, or progression to doctoral study – in all cases with tools far stronger than those enjoyed by graduates of MBA or other business school masters’ programs, by graduates of public policy programs, or by new PhD students who do not have a master’s degree. Indeed, the growing gap between the technical rigor of PhD programs and undergraduate coursework makes the MA far more valuable today than even a few years ago. Similarly, the vast advances in sophistication of financial analysis make the rigorous technical study of financial econometrics and forecasting tools distinctly advantageous in contrast with less-technical business school programs.

The Duke Economics MA is designed to be one of the most quantitative of all North American masters’ programs. It aims for a narrow segment of the market:

• Students preparing for PhD programs, either by taking advanced mathematics, statistics, and theory, or gaining intuition and exposure to economic issues;
• Students preparing for careers in technical financial analysis;
• Mid-career research economists seeking to brush up on econometric and modeling skills, and to undertake a research sabbatical;
• Aspiring lawyers who want to gain a solid grounding in game theory, microeconomics, econometrics, and cost-benefit analysis; and
• Aspiring policy analysts seeking to gain modeling and econometric skills prior to embarking on a career in government, think-tanks, or consulting.