I am not an economist, but I do happen to know a fair amount about graduate school (I've been in two and my dissertation is on higher education):
1) Unless you have a good reason, go to the best/highest prestige school that will accept you. Why? Prestige/repuation tends to correlate with things that help you in an academic career: being around smart students and professors, having a good name on the degree, being in a place with opportunities (journals, research projects, good libraries, etc) and getting well connected within your chosen academic discipline. Qualification: a school's prestige may vary among disciplines - for ex, Pittsburgh is highly regarded in philosophy but not so much in econ. 2) In economics, the highest ranked programs tend to be (in no order): MIT, Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Michigan, Berkeley. Other highly regrded programs are UCLA, NYU, Rochester, Cal Tech, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin. I am sure that you can get other good recommendations from Armchairs. 3) Reasons NOT to go into the highest prestige program that accepts you: you need to be geographically close to your family, no one in the department will be able to guide your research or they have not given you ANY support whatsoever, the program treats its students badly. However, since departmental prestige is so important in the early part of your career (you won't have many publications, so you don't have your own reputation yet) you might ignore these and still go to the highest ranked programs. Think about it - you'll be stuck with your Ph.D. your whole life but family illness may pass (hopefully) or your intellectual interests may change. People may begin to like you once you show up and you'll get more departmental support. Fabio > Armchairs, > > Biases out, which school is the best place to study economics and why? >
