Economics PhD programs in Europe: Completion times and job placement

Figures & data

Table 1. Program details.

Autonoma Barcelona	The graduate program at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona consists of a two-year Master’s in Economic Analysis, followed by a research phase. The entire path is counted.
Bocconi	The program at Bocconi University is officially described as a four-year program, with the first two years dedicated to coursework. However, our analysis shows that candidates take substantially longer to finish their PhDs.
Bonn	The program at Universität Bonn is structured into four years, of which the first two are mainly coursework. Time can be extended into the fifth year for the academic job market.
Cambridge	The full program at the University of Cambridge is split into a one-year MPhil (coursework) phase and a PhD phase (research). Both are counted as time to completion.
Carlos III	The graduate program at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid consists of a two-year Master’s in Economic Analysis, followed by a three-year PhD in Economics. Sufficient performance of the former provides entry to the latter. The entire path is counted.
CEMFI	The PhD program at the Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros starts out with two years of coursework, which is taken jointly with a master’s program. Some master’s students subsequently enroll as PhD students. In either case, the entire path is counted.
EUI	The program at the European University Institute is entirely standardized, with coursework as part of the PhD program. There was a small terminal master’s program in the past consisting of part of the same coursework.
Frankfurt	The program at Göthe Universität in Frankfurt is officially described as a four-year program, with the first two years dedicated to coursework. However, our analysis shows that candidates take substantially longer to finish their PhDs.
IIES	The PhD program at the Institute for International Economic Studies is organized jointly with the Department of Economics of the University of Stockholm. Entry into IIES is competitive outside of the program. We also count the full time spent in the PhD program, if part of it was spent outside of the IIES.
LSE	The full program at the London School of Economics and Political Science is split into a two-year MRes (coursework) phase and a PhD phase (research). Some who obtained a previous master’s degree (usually a terminal MSc from LSE) may be allowed to complete the MRes in one year instead of two. Both the time spent on the MRes and the PhD phase are counted as time to completion, but previous degrees are not.
Mannheim	The program at Universität Mannheim lasts five years, of which the first two years are coursework. Funding is committed for the entire period.
Oxford	The full program at the University of Oxford is split into a two-year MPhil (coursework) phase and a DPhil phase (research). Both are counted as time to completion.
Paris SE	The Paris School of Economics (PSE) is a collection of economics departments in Paris. PhD candidates from these schools are listed as PhD candidates of PSE. Three different subsets of this set of schools each jointly offer a master’s degree, which consists of one year of core coursework (the Master 1) and one year of advanced coursework (the Master 2). Subsequently, students may be admitted to a PhD program. The entire path is counted.
SSE	The program at the Stockholm School of Economics starts with a two-year course phase, after which two to three years of research follow.
Tilburg	The five-year graduate program at Tilburg University consists of a two-year research master’s and a three-year PhD program. The entire path is counted.
Tinbergen	The Tinbergen Institute is a joint graduate school and research institute of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Amsterdam, and the Free University Amsterdam, Netherlands. Tinbergen offers a two-year MPhil degree, after which students can be offered doctoral positions in one of the three universities. The three universities also hire PhD students for four-year positions that do not require formal coursework (further to previous degrees), and some of these are listed as Tinbergen placements. Because we cannot distinguish between the two, we list all students that the Tinbergen Institute lists and count time spent in the MPhil as well.
Toulouse	The Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) doctoral program consists of a Master 2 (French university system) in Econometric Theory and Econometrics, which is explicitly part of the “doctoral track,” a DEEQA degree, which is essentially the second year of coursework, and a research phase. The entire path is counted.
UCL	The program at University College London is structured into MRes (first year, coursework), MPhil (second year, research), and PhD (following two years). Thereafter, students have another year to complete their thesis with full student status.
UPF	The typical path toward a PhD at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) includes one year of core courses in an MSc program, one year of advanced courses in an Mphil program, and then a research phase. While the MSc is also a large terminal degree (at least with respect to UPF), it is part of the core sequence of courses for a UPF PhD. Thus, the entire path is counted.
Warwick	The program at the University of Warwick is structured into a two-year MRes, followed by a four-year PhD (total: 2 + 4). Students should submit toward the end of year 3 of the PhD and go on the job market in year 4.
Zurich	The program at the University of Zurich has a two-year course phase followed by a research phase that is not formally structured.

Table 2. Percentage listed.

Percentage listed	2016
EUI	100%
LSE	100%
Oxford Cambridge	43%
UPF	0%
Carlos III	100%
Toulouse	100%
Paris SE	100%
Tinbergen	75%
Tilburg	13%
Autonoma Barcelona	86%
CEMFI	100%
UCL Warwick Zurich	83%
Bonn	89%
Mannheim	92%
IIES	100%
SSE	25%
Bocconi	100%
Frankfurt	83%
Average	77%

Percentage of reported job market candidates eventually listed as placements for the academic year 2015–16. Blanks indicate that job market candidates were not yet listed during our first stage of data collection.

Table 3. Average time to job market (years).^a

Program	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	Average	Weighted^b
Autonoma Barcelona	6.00	6.20	5.50	6.00	6.14	5.97	6.03
Bocconi	6.50	5.88	6.20	6.86	5.80	6.25	6.24
Bonn	4.80	5.33	5.67	4.75	5.56	5.22	5.33
Cambridge	4.80	5.33	5.67			5.27	5.21
Carlos III	5.89	6.29	5.67	5.56	5.50	5.78	5.79
CEMFI	5.75		6.50	6.20	6.00	6.11	6.08
EUI	4.45	4.75	5.18	4.89	5.10	4.88	4.87
Frankfurt	5.44	5.60	5.78	5.75	6.00	5.71	5.70
IIES	6.00	6.00	6.00	7.00	6.60	6.32	6.27
LSE	6.31	5.79	6.79	6.14	6.30	6.27	6.25
Mannheim	5.56	5.20	5.38	5.78	5.75	5.53	5.53
Oxford	6.14	5.31	5.50	5.56	6.14	5.73	5.64
Paris SE	6.13	6.00	6.00	6.27	6.30	6.14	6.16
SSE	6.00	5.50	5.50	5.33	6.00	5.67	5.67
Tilburg		4.80			5.50	5.15	5.23
Tinbergen	5.32	4.93	5.44	5.39	5.94	5.40	5.40
Toulouse	5.70	5.50	5.75	6.60	6.80	6.07	6.20
UCL			6.40	6.29	6.42	6.37	6.38
UPF				5.50	6.50	6.00	5.88
Warwick		5.64	5.50	6.00		5.71	5.70
Zurich	4.00	5.00	5.20	7.50		5.43	5.56
Average	5.58	5.50	5.77	5.97	6.02	5.76	5.77

^aBlanks indicate that there were zero observations for the respective institution in that year.

^bObservation Weighted Average Time to Job Market

Table 4. Median time to job market (years).^a

Program	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	Average
Autonoma Barcelona	6.00	6.00	5.50	6.00	6.00	5.90
Bocconi	6.50	6.00	6.00	6.00	6.00	6.10
Bonn	5.00	5.00	5.00	5.00	6.00	5.20
Cambridge	4.00	5.00	6.00			5.00
Carlos III	6.00	6.00	6.00	6.00	5.50	5.90
CEMFI	6.00		6.50	6.00	6.00	6.13
EUI	4.00	5.00	5.00	5.00	5.00	4.80
Frankfurt	6.00	6.00	6.00	5.50	6.00	5.90
IIES	6.00	6.00	6.00	7.00	7.00	6.40
LSE	6.00	6.00	7.00	6.00	6.00	6.20
Mannheim	5.00	5.00	5.00	6.00	6.00	5.40
Oxford	6.00	5.00	6.00	5.00	6.00	5.60
Paris SE	6.00	6.00	6.00	6.00	6.00	6.00
SSE	6.00	5.00	5.00	5.00	6.00	5.40
Tilburg		5.00			6.00	5.50
Tinbergen	5.00	5.00	5.00	5.00	6.00	5.20
Toulouse	6.00	5.50	5.50	6.50	7.00	6.10
UCL			6.00	6.00	6.50	6.17
UPF				5.50	6.00	5.75
Warwick		6.00	5.50	6.00		5.83
Zurich	4.00	5.00	5.00	7.50		5.38
Average	5.50	5.47	5.68	5.84	6.06	5.71

^aBlanks indicate that there were zero observations for the respective institution in that year.

Table 5. Number of observations.

Program	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	Total
Autonoma Barcelona	7	10	4	2	7	30
Bocconi	4	8	5	7	5	29
Bonn	5	9	9	4	9	36
Cambridge	5	6	3	0	0	14
Carlos III	9	7	9	9	4	38
CEMFI	4	0	2	5	1	12
EUI	11	12	11	9	10	53
Frankfurt	9	5	9	8	6	37
IIES	1	7	1	1	5	15
LSE	16	14	14	21	10	75
Mannheim	9	10	13	9	12	53
Oxford	7	16	6	9	7	45
Paris SE	8	9	6	11	10	44
SSE	5	6	6	3	4	24
Tilburg	0	5	0	0	8	13
Tinbergen	25	15	25	31	16	112
Toulouse	10	2	8	10	10	40
UCL	0	0	10	7	12	29
UPF	0	0	0	10	6	16
Warwick	0	11	6	6	0	23
Zurich	1	1	5	2	0	9
Total	136	153	152	164	142	747

Figure 1. Completion times.

Table 6. Regression table.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Completion time	Placement prestige	Completion time AP	Institution prestige AP
Gender: M	−0.14  (−1.37)	−0.04 (−0.41)	−0.25   (−1.65)	−0.07  (−0.42)
Field
Econometrics	−0.14  (−0.77)	−0.32 (−1.58)	−0.21   (−0.84)	−0.22  (−0.79)
Finance	−0.15  (−0.87)	−0.16 (−0.94)	−0.38   (−1.33)	−0.19  (−0.71)
Macro	−0.00  (−0.00)	0.19   (1.37)	0.25     (1.28)	−0.10  (−0.45)
Micro	−0.01  (−0.12)	0.08  (0.55)	−0.11   (−0.58)	0.02   (0.10)
Year of Market	0.12^***  (3.79)	−0.03 (−0.89)	0.10^*    (2.05)	−0.02  (−0.44)
Undergrad Field
Economics/Finance	−0.10  (−0.50)	0.01  (0.05)	−0.25   (−0.85)	0.20   (0.67)
Engineering/Math/Physics	0.18   (0.80)	−0.34 (−1.38)	−0.08   (−0.25)	0.51   (1.46)
Social Sciences/Law/Other	−0.12  (−0.36)	0.88^*  (2.27)	−1.05^**  (−2.60)	−0.01  (−0.02)
Completion Time
Completion Time 3 years		−0.26 (−0.60)		−6.28^***  (−10.58)
Completion Time 5 years		0.16  (0.89)		0.09   (0.33)
Completion Time 6 years		0.12  (0.67)		−0.03  (−0.11)
Completion Time 7 years		0.29  (1.35)		−0.18  (−0.55)
Completion Time 8 years		0.37  (1.10)		0.07   (0.14)
Cut 1	−3.00^*** (−6.99)	−0.33 (−0.80)	−2.93^*** (−4.83)	−1.76^**    (−2.94)
Cut 2	−1.47^***  (−4.20)	0.34   (0.83)	−1.51^**  (−2.85)	−0.25  (−0.42)
Cut 3	−0.08  (−0.23)		−0.13   (−0.25)
Cut 4	1.30^***  (3.76)		1.49^**   (2.86)
Cut 5	2.35^***  (6.43)		2.55^***   (4.78)
Institution fixed effects	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
N	650	625	276	276
Pseudo R^2	0.09	0.06	0.12	0.07

Note: Results of ordered probit regressions. Estimation is done with robust standard errors. Base categories of the ordered probit regression are the following: Gender—Female, Field—Applied, Undergrad—Business Administration. In columns (1) and (3) Completion time is a categorical outcome (not as a continuous variable). In columns (2) and (4), the two prestige variables are recoded as follows: Top becomes “1,” Middle becomes “2,” and Low becomes “3.” They are then used as a categorical outcome (not as a continuous variable). For more detail on the definition of these prestige rankings, please refer to the text. “AP” in columns (3) and (4) stands for Assistant Professor sample.

Significance levels are noted as follows: ^*p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.01; ^***p < 0.001

Figure 2. Predicted probability distribution of completion times.

Figure 3. Predicted probability distribution of completion times by gender.

Figure 4. Predicted probability distribution of completion times by research field.

Figure 5. Predicted first job placement prestige by completion time.

Figure 6. Placement prestige and completion times across Europe.

Figure 7. Predicted first job placement by gender.

Figure 8. Predicted PhD placement prestige by field of undergraduate studies.

Figure 9. Completion times—assistant professors.

Figure 10. Predicted first placement institutional prestige by completion time—assistant professors.

Figure 11. Placement institutional prestige and completion times across Europe—assistant professors.