UFGator Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 If there are any other current economics graduate students, please post your story and info! My Background: Bachelors: BA Economics Formal Math Training: Very little Informal Math Training: Over a period of about 6 months, I watched a lecture series each online: multivariable calc (MIT), Linear Algebra (MIT), Real Analysis (Harvey Mudd College has a decent series on this), diff EQ (MIT), and a solid probability primer by mathematical monk- (http://www.youtube.com/user/mathematicalmonk) Current Grad School Status: Just started second semester. Impressions so far: The "jump" from undergrad was as big, if not exceeding my expectations. My first semester I had Micro 1, Macro 1, and Math Econ. Macro 1 was pure was pure wizardry compared to my undergraduate economics. Micro wasn't too terrible, which I attribute to having been taught optimization in my undergrad upper div. micro course. I studied just about 5-6 hours a day 5-6 days a week and got a 3.78 for the semester. I have comprehensive exams at the end of this semester! YIKES! Anyone else out there?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Behavioral Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 Bachelors: B.A. in Joint Math/Econ and B.S. in Psychology Formal Math Training: Calculus 1/2/3, Linear Algebra, ODE, PDE, Real Analysis, Probability/Stochastic Theory, Topology Informal Math Training: None? Current Grad School Status: Second quarter in a behavioral marketing PhD program -- pretty smug about my decision not to go into Economics (which I had been planning on for most of my undergraduate career!). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UFGator Posted February 2, 2012 Author Share Posted February 2, 2012 Behavioral Marketing?! Sounds interesting, tell me more . I'm so jealous that you took Topology, the only Topology series I can find online is taught by a guy that tons of mathematicians are very skeptical about. I've been trying to slowly read through baby Rudin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Behavioral Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 I can go on forever about what behavioral marketing is, but it's basically a field in marketing that focuses on psychological processes in consumer behavior. A major subfield within behavioral marketing is behavioral decision theory (BDT), which a summary of can be found here: http://www.columbia.edu/~rk566/research/The%20Synthesis%20of%20Preference.pdf BDT is very much the cross-section of classical microeconomics and psychology, which practically arose from the Kahneman and Tversky papers on Prospect Theory and was propagated form there. Contemporary researchers on the subject come from Economics (George Loewenstein), Psychology (Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, etc.), and Marketing (Dan Ariely, Ravi Dhar, etc.)--and many other disciplines as well. Much of what goes on in the discipline is seeing how robust the biases and errors humans make in choice tasks, how they differ from microeconomic predictions, and what are the causes/moderators of such biases/errors. Anyway, I'm doing research on judgment and decision making, goals and motivation, behavioral decision theory, and (just recently) neuromarketing (neuroscience of consumer behavior / influence). If you're actually at Florida, you have one of the best behavioral marketing faculties focusing on behavioral decision theory at your business school. Here's a paper by Joe Alba (senior faculty at Warrington) on the theoretical aspect of "unused utility", a popular paper by Chris Janiszewski on pricing's effect on consumer preference, and a fairly recent review paper on 'rationality' and its implications on behavioral decision theory by Robyn Leboeuf. You really should just drop them a visit and ask them about their research. There are also more quantitative/econometric modelers in marketing in case that's your interest. They tend to focus on marketing variables (pricing, R&D, ROI, order of entry, customer satisfaction, etc.) at the firm, brand, and/or product levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UFGator Posted February 4, 2012 Author Share Posted February 4, 2012 Florida was my undergrad, but I actually volunteered in one of the experimental marketing labs while I was there. I imagine you do a lot of discrete choice modeling? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Behavioral Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Florida was my undergrad, but I actually volunteered in one of the experimental marketing labs while I was there. I imagine you do a lot of discrete choice modeling? Yes, sir! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UFGator Posted February 11, 2012 Author Share Posted February 11, 2012 Nice. I've been reading a few papers on the subject lately. I'm particularly interested in political economics, and I know that discrete choice modeling will be pretty important going forward. You dabble in game theory? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Behavioral Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 Nice. I've been reading a few papers on the subject lately. I'm particularly interested in political economics, and I know that discrete choice modeling will be pretty important going forward. You dabble in game theory? Yeah--I did my undergrad honors thesis for my math/econ degree on empirical game theory modeling. I was also roommates with the owner/admin of http://gametheory101.com/, Billy Spaniel, and we're actually going to be writing a more comprehensive extension to his Game Theory 101 e-book to incorporate some behavioral game theory/economics later this summer! eastafricanhopeful 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UFGator Posted February 12, 2012 Author Share Posted February 12, 2012 That's awesome! I PM'd you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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