Director’s Message

Welcome to the Department of Economics at York University, which houses two graduate programs: a one-year MA program and a six-year PhD program.

Both programs usually admit students once per year for the Fall semester. Our PhD program will pause its Fall 2025 intake, but we expect to restart admissions for Fall 2026. The MA program will admit students as usual for Fall 2025 entry.

There is a limited number of funded slots in our MA program, through a combination of scholarships and employment as Teaching Assistants, but we are also happy to consider unfunded applicants. All admissions into our PhD program are fully funded at the time this is written.

The MA program is one year long and consists of courses only. The PhD program is made up by coursework in the first year, culminating in three comprehensive exams at the end of the Winter semester. The second year consists of directed readings and a research paper. This transitions in the third year into research under the supervision of one, or more, faculty members.

Starting around the third year, PhD students regularly present their ongoing research in a weekly workshop, which is led by the department’s most successful faculty members. The enclosed picture shows one such meeting, chaired by Prof. Antoine Djogbenou and with PhD student Sreyphea Chheang presenting.

The department overall has a very active research faculty, as measured by publications in competitive international Economics journals. As of August 2024, and based on their whole careers, 14 of our faculty ranked among the top 25% among research economists in Canada, according to the IDEAS website (https://ideas.repec.org/top/). The corresponding ranking based on research published over the last 10 years lists 11 faculty members in the department among the top 25%.

Also based on publications over the last 10 years, we find 3 faculty members from the Department of Economics at York in the top quartile globally. In other words, our best research faculty, who teach in our MA and/or PhD programs, compete with some of the most successful and well-cited academic economists around the world.

Our alumni are successful too. After graduating, our best MA students tend to go into competitive PhD programs, while others pursue rewarding non-academic careers. Some of our best PhD graduates end up in academia, or else in attractive positions in the private and public sectors, such as financial institutions or government agencies.

Best,

Nils-Petter Lagerlöf
nippelagerlof.com
Graduate Program Director, Economics
September 11, 2024

_{A photo of PhD student presenting in ECON7000}