About the Department of Economics

The Department of Economics was founded in 1964. Our current chair is Joel Watson, Professor of Economics. The department is located in both the Economics Building and Sequoyah Hall, in UCSD's Thurgood Marshall College.

UCSD was founded four decades ago, and the first faculty appointment was made in July 1957. In 1959, the UC Regents approved the University of California, La Jolla. A year later, the campus was renamed the University of California, San Diego and its first graduate students were enrolled. UCSD admitted its first undergraduate students in 1964, the same year the Department of Economics was founded.

UCSD has about 16,150 undergraduate and 2,101 graduate students. The campus typically ranks among the top four universities receiving federal research funds. The faculty of roughly 1,383 includes 64 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 74 Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and five Nobel Laureates.

UCSD currently occupies 1,200 acres of coastal woodland on the La Jolla bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Mexico is 20 miles to the south, and Los Angeles is 120 miles to the north. The San Jacinto mountains, rising to 11,000 feet, are two hours drive to the northeast. The Laguna mountains, rising to more than 6,000 feet, are a one hour drive to the east. The climate is perhaps the most benign in the United States, year-round. In July the mean high temperature is 77, while in January it is 65.

Faculty

The Department of Economics currently has 31 faculty, three research professors (all Nobel Laureates), and nine associated faculty. We are a relatively young group, all committed to a rigorous analytical approach to both teaching and research. As a consequence, we have a congenial and cooperative atmosphere in which department members take an unusually active interest in their colleagues' research.

There are no social or administrative distinctions between junior and senior faculty, except on promotion decisions. Eight faculty members are Fellows of the Econometric Society, three are on the Econometric Society Council, and three are Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Five are NBER Research Associates, and twelve have NSF grants.

Undergraduate Program

UCSD undergraduates are taken from the top tenth of their high school classes. Undergraduate education is organized into colleges, of which six, each with different graduation requirements, are currently in operation. Each faculty member is formally affiliated with one of these colleges. However, our department's courses are open to students of all colleges; we have a single set of major requirements for all students; and all department offices are located in our own building.

Approximately ten percent of UCSD seniors graduate in our department's majors. Our undergraduate economics program takes a modern analytical approach. In recent years, many of our students have been admitted to leading graduate programs in economics, business, and law. The department offers a standard economics major, a management science major, and a joint economics and mathematics major. All our majors are required to have one year of calculus.

Graduate Program

The department's graduate program is strictly a doctoral program, although we do award a "consolation" M.A. degree. Reflecting the orientation of the faculty, the doctoral program is designed to provide students with a strong foundation in economic theory and econometric methods. The core courses, which occupy most of a student's first two years, represent a substantially greater investment in formal training in theory and econometrics than the core courses of most good graduate programs. We enroll about 20-25 new graduate students each fall, and currently have 79 graduate students in residence. While they are of mixed ability, the best are good by any standards. Because ours is a demanding program, we believe that all 229 Ph.D.s we have produced to date are able, well-trained economists.

Placements include appointments at leading government agencies and research institutions and assistant professorships at Brown; Chicago; UC Davis; Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Brazil; Hong Kong; CSU Long Beach; Lehigh; Complutense, Madrid; Michigan; Mississippi Business School; Montreal; New York/Stern School; North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Northwestern/Kellogg School of Mgt.; Nottingham; Old Dominion; Pennsylvania/Wharton School; Pompeu Fabra; UC Riverside; Seiki; San Diego State; So. Illinois, Edwardsville; Syracuse; Texas A&M; Taiwan; and Virginia.

Teaching Load

UCSD is on the quarter system. The regular academic year consists of three quarters, each of which involves ten weeks of classes. The classroom teaching load in the department is four one-quarter courses per year. In addition, each department member supervises one graduate reading tutorial or seminar in his or her specialty.

Almost all faculty members have an interest in teaching core theory and methods courses at both graduate and undergraduate levels, although no one teaches such courses exclusively. The responsibility for providing our students with an attractive, balanced menu of courses, especially at the undergraduate level, is shared by all.

Library & Computer Center

The research facilities available to department members are excellent. The department library subscribes to 60 periodicals, including the major journals, and has about 1,200 reference volumes. The University Libraries house over 2.6 million volumes, subscribe to over 26,000 serials in print and/or electronic format, and is an official depository of government documents.

Books and journals not in UCSD's collections may be requested (electronically, if so desired) from any of the other University of California libraries or from other university libraries around the country. The University Libraries also provide on-campus and remote online access to numerous reference indexes and data collections.

The department maintains a computational laboratory for graduate students which includes 15 PCs that are updated yearly to ensure that the graduate students are supplied with enough computing power to perform complicated econometrics procedures such as Bootstrap and Monte Carlo. All of these machines have access to the latest versions of leading statistical packages including GAUSS, SAS, S-Plus, Stata, and E-views, as well as Microsoft Office for desktop publishing and Scientific Workplace for journal quality typesetting.

In addition, laser printers, a color printer, Zip, Jaz, and CD-RW drives are available for student use in the lab. In cases where the PC environment is insufficient to fulfill the needs of a graduate student, the San Diego Supercomputer Center is only yards away with 5 of the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world including the 8th fastest machine.

In the past students have used the SDSC to perform a variety of Monte Carlo techniques which would not be feasible on an ordinary computer. The Economics Department also shares access to the Social Sciences Computer Center's leading edge HP-9000 K-class Unix server, which is via telnet from anywhere in the world.

The SSCC maintains an extensive selection of statistical and econometric packages in addition to standard language and math routines. In addition, the SSCC hosts the social science database, which contains the major census, financial, and survey data sets. All computers are networked with the leading edge UCSD campus backbone that provides high-speed access to the Internet as well as ultra-high speed access to other leading edge university and research institutions via the Internet II.

Speaker Series

There are four regularly scheduled seminars per week, with various additional speakers. Each week there is also an informal econometrics lunch, which is attended by faculty, visitors and some graduate students. For the current speaker schedule, please visit the Seminar page.