Director's Message

Welcome to the Department of Economics at York University, which houses two graduate programs: a one-year Master’s program, currently admitting a little over 30 students per year; and a six-year Doctoral program, which targets an intake of approximately 10 students per year.

Admissions into both programs are made once per year for the Fall semester, which starts around early September.

All admitted students are fully funded through a combination of scholarships and employment as Teaching Assistants.

The MA program is one year long and consists of courses only. The PhD program is made up of 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 also present their ongoing research in a weekly workshop (ECON7000), where the department’s best research faculty take turns each year acting as course directors. The enclosed picture shows one such meeting held in February 2023, 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 January 2023, and based on their whole careers, 14 faculty affiliated with the department (including new hires) ranked in the top quartile of research economists in Canada, according to the IDEAS website. The corresponding ranking based on research published over the last 10 years lists 11 department faculty members (including new hires) in the top quartile.

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

_{A photo of PhD student presenting in ECON7000}