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Very easy to give a fact-free hot take, but I thought I'd take a look at the "research" section of Harvard's economics department website at the moment[1] to se

Very easy to give a fact-free hot take, but I thought I'd take a look at the "research" section of Harvard's economics department website at the moment[1] to see what they work on. I'm not an economist but it seems like a pretty serious attempt to understand the real-world economy. Picking a paper purely at random (again, I'm not an economist so I just clicked through a few and they seem similar-ish to me in a broad sense) this[2] is a pretty serious analysis of industrial policy with some real-world case studies about the Oxford-AstraZeneca partnership around the covid vaccine, German industrial policy given the transition from heavy industry to climate tech and some stuff about how Israel has created a favourable climate for tech startups. That not real-world enough for you? [1] https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/research-papers https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/research-papers [2] https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/mazzucato_m._rodrik_d._2023_industrial_policy_with_conditionalities.pdf https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.ed...

mhh__ 2y ago
Well the point was about students not researchers afaict. There's a difference between Harvard (or any powerful equivalent) the research establishment and Harvard the school for training America's new elite. Most of the economics students I know (especially the Harvard ones) would not surprise the PC at all. As a subject it doesn't attract particularly serious people.
giantg2 2y ago
Those are research papers. But these kinds of case studies aren't unusual at the undergrad level even at state schools. The rubric and results are not as in-depth or built out as published research. Usually the question for these exercises or papers are built on research publications so the professors have answers to grade yours against.

mhh__ 2y ago

Well the point was about students not researchers afaict. There's a difference between Harvard (or any powerful equivalent) the research establishment and Harvard the school for training America's new elite. Most of the economics students I know (especially the Harvard ones) would not surprise the PC at all. As a subject it doesn't attract particularly serious people.

giantg2 2y ago

Those are research papers. But these kinds of case studies aren't unusual at the undergrad level even at state schools. The rubric and results are not as in-depth or built out as published research. Usually the question for these exercises or papers are built on research publications so the professors have answers to grade yours against.