N.Gregory Mankiev's advice to Young Economists...

Nicholas Gregory "Greg" Mankiw(born February 3, 1958) is an American macroeconomist of Ukranian descent. He is perhaps one of the greatest living Economists.He did his graduation at Princeton and spend an year each at MIT and Harvard Law School for his Ph.D.Currently, he is a professor of economics at Harvard University, where he teaches introductory economics (ec 10) among other courses. From 2003 to 2005, Mankiw was the chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors. His publications are ranked among the most influential publications.His books have been recommended as text books in many universities and is a very influential person in the Economic students community. I felt that I should start this blog remembering his advices to Economic students.The following are his main advices to aspiring Economists, who are at the just started tasting the subject(aimed especially for under graduates). I am sure that this would benefit many more students like me to give direction to their careers.

1. Take as many math and statistics courses as you can stomach.

2. Choose your economics courses from professors who are passionate about the field and care about teaching. Ignore the particular topics covered when choosing courses. All parts of economics can be made interesting, or deadly dull, depending on the instructor.

3. Use your summers to experience economics from different perspectives. Spend one working as a research assistant for a professor, one working in a policy job in government, and one working in the private sector.
 
4. Read economics for fun in your spare time. (His suggestions for reading given below)


5. Follow economics news. The best weekly is The Economist. The best daily is the Wall Street Journal.

6. If you are at a research university, attend the economic research seminars at your school about once a week. You may not understand the discussions at first, because they may seem too technical, but you will pick up more than you know, and eventually you’ll be giving the seminar yourself.

HIS SUMMER READING LIST FOR STUDENTS:-

 1Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
 2.Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers
 3.Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity
 4.Steven Landsburg, The Armchair Economist
 5.P.J. O'Rourke, Eat the Rich
 6.Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street
 7.Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically
 8.Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
 9.John McMillan, Reinventing the Bazaar
 10.William Breit and Barry T. Hirsch, Lives of the Laureates

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