"Economists recognize how painful and wrenching the experiences of an economic downturn like the one we are currently experiencing can be for households and firms, but they also find that times like this create a lot of new research questions," says James M. Poterba, the Mitsui Professor of Economics and president of the National Bureau of Economic Research."
The article also states:
"This is intellectually fascinating for many of us," says Ricardo Caballero, head of the Department of Economics and the Ford International Professor of Economics, describing the market shocks and subsequent policy moves of the past six months. "My financial wealth has declined, but my human wealth has increased."
The recession may be prompting more people to seek graduate degrees in economics or MBAs. Applications to Sloan last fall rose 28 percent from the previous year, while the Department of Economics saw a more than 10 percent increase in graduate applications last fall and expects applications to jump again this year."
Could you imaging if all the bridges started to fall or all the computers started to crash and the EECS or CE professors taking glee in the fact that there would be new theses available. The truth of the matter is that they have no clue from the outset! Economics is not at the stage that it is anywhere near a science or engineering discipline, there are no true verifiable facts, and at best we can see students trying to discern what happened with tools and techniques which failed to predict what was to happen in the first place and when applied have also failed to have any deterministic effect.
I guess they just have no shame! But I also guess that there will just be many more produced. It is like investigative journalists...after Watergate everyone wanted to be one.
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