Econometric analysis of econ PhD graduates

Today's Labour Markets Workshop at LSE was quite interesting. The main finding of the paper presented is that economics PhD graduates get a better job in booming years (years with more job offers and/or favourable macroeconomic conditions) and that those students who got a better initial placement are more productive in research outputs for the first 12 years of their career. (If you're interested, have a look at the paper. Especially, read the acknowledgement on the first page. The last sentence indicates the author, Paul Oyer, is quite funny a guy.)

In the paper, the economics department ranking data at econphd.net (see my post on 23th June) is extensively used. The speaker said this ranking was great because it also ranked non-academic research institutions (e.g. the World Bank), which is important for his research purpose as not every economics PhD graduates became professors.