Tag: employment

Learn Economics. Work for Amazon, eBay, [insert tech company name here]…

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This working paper from the Harvard Business School by Susan Athey and Michael Luca was recently brought to my attention by Dr. Alba Collart. The authors discuss the increasing role of economists working for tech companies like Amazon, eBay, Google, Airbnb, etc. Fascinating stuff!

I’ll list what I thought were some of the highlights:

  • Not only is the number of economists employed in this sector growing rapidly, but economists are playing more central roles in company decision-making.
  • What are the skills these companies want that economists have? (1) identifying causal relationships, (2) designing incentives to improve business outcomes, (3) disentangling the complexities of market equilibria.
  • Economists take on a wide variety of roles, from data analysis to experiment design, to public policy work.

And economists at these companies are working on topics like:

  • How to increase online advertising revenue?
  • What types of email language lead not only to more people opening them but to increased sales?
  • How do changes in the app user interface affect consumer behavior?
  • How can bias in online reviews be minimized?

And economists work on the complex interactions of these ideas as well. One example given is how eBay at one point changed its user interface to make it easier to compare prices across products. Well, this affected consumer choice, which in turn affected prices charged by sellers, all of which, over the long run, affected whether consumers used eBay at all.

I should mention that the focus of the article is on PhD economists, and I know a great place to get started in the field of economics if you’re interested!

Update: What are our EEM graduates up to?

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Well, we have a new boss here in the department and he asked me to update this previous blog post from early 2015 about what our EEM majors are doing after they graduate from our program. I spent a little time tracking some of them down and had some fun conversations – some I hadn’t spoken with for a few years so it was really nice to catch up!

You can see the previous list in last year’s blog post but here are what the graduates since then have been doing. We’ve had eight new graduates since the last post, and two I haven’t been able to get hold of. For the remaining six we have:

  • Recruiter for a staffing agency, Raleigh NC
  • Economic Development Program Manager at Mississippi Development Authority, Jackson MS
  • Legislative Assistant for Florida Crystals Corporation (producer of organic and low-environmental-impact sugar), Washington DC
  • Restaurant Manager, Starkville MS
  • AmeriCorps VISTA for the Center for Economic Education and Financial Literacy (here in our department)
  • Graduate school, joint JD & MA in Environment & Natural Resources, University of Wyoming

Besides these recent graduates, some of our earlier graduates from the EEM program who were mentioned in the previous post have changed jobs. They are now:

  • Peace Corps, Sustainable Ag Systems Extension Agent, Panama
  • Major Donor Manager, Republican National Committee, Washington DC
  • Speech Language Pathologist, Cumberland MD
  • Law School, Washington & Lee  U.
  • Unit Director, Boys & Girls Club, Starkville MS
  • Administrator, Fresh Thyme Farmers Market (natural & organic grocery store), Worthington OH

I should also point out that we had four Demmer Scholars who completed internships in Washington, DC this past summer. Three were current EEM students, one of whom will be working with the Foreign Ag Service in Washington, DC after graduating next spring. (Lesson: internships can lead to job opportunities!)

You can see our EEM graduates are spread out fairly well around the nation in a variety of endeavors. Also, it’s around that time of year when students in Dr. Little’s seminar class will be going around to their advisers asking questions like what job opportunities there are for our majors, whether internships are useful, how to be successful as an undergrad student, etc. I usually tell my advisees that economics is a way of thinking that helps you in any job in which critical, logical thinking is an important skill (and that’s important for many jobs as you can read about here!). But, if you want to actually do what most economists do, which is analyze data in order to answer important questions relevant to policy and to private decision-making, you’re going to want to consider going to graduate school to further develop your economic skills. Grad school isn’t for everyone – neither in terms of taste nor in terms of need – so our hope in the department is that we help our students develop economic thinking and knowledge and expose them to conducting economic analysis so that they can make great, best-informed decisions about their own futures, which can take any of numerous exciting routes. And maybe they have a little fun while in the program too…

County Economic Profiles

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Mississippi’s economy is recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing recession. Analysis indicates that the government, retail trade and health care sectors are experiencing advancements in competitive advantage and that total output for the state is increasing with the Utilities, Finance and Insurance, and Real Estate and Rental and Leasing sectors leading the way with double digit growth from 2007-2012. The small business sector is also experiencing growth with over 15,000 businesses opening and over 8,000 expanding (for the 9 employees or less size classification) for 2012. The state’s strongest employment sectors are local and state government, food services and drinking places and health care related sectors. For detailed information on each Mississippi county, visit http://msucare.com/crd/county_profiles