Economics - it's not just a really good degree for later job opportunities,
but it's also a way to understand the world and find answers to these really big
questions concerning society.
The Master program in Economics here at SSE is a two-year program.
You get a great toolbox to do basically anything related to economics.
So, you learn theory, you learn how to apply it, you learn how to use
statistics in order to understand important empirical phenomena.
You basically close no doors doing economics, but you open a lot of them.
We all know that SSE is highly ranked in the league table.
So, for me, that was a really important factor to be in an institution
that is doing cutting-edge research and that is preparing us for what's to come after our Master's.
So, what I think is great about doing this program is getting a very general overview of economics
and a very general skill set in economics and then being able to really specialize.
So, the first year consists of semester one where you take four core courses in economics:
mathematics, microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics.
In the second semester, you take three to four electives in economics
and you can choose between courses in behavioral economics, time series econometrics,
dynamic macroeconomic analysis, industrial organization,
international trade and development economics.
In a lot of the economics courses, we study the challenges and problems we face in the Western world,
in the developed region, but you also need to understand what challenges and problems
developing countries are facing in order to understand the whole
kind of economic context of the world.
In the second year, there are many options.
You can either go on exchange, to some other university, somewhere else.
You write your thesis over one semester or over two semesters.
You can stay here and take more courses in economics or in other fields here at SSE.
I knew that, here, I could tailor all of the courses to my needs and interests.
Here, you get a foundation in theory. You learn a lot:
microeconomics, macroeconomics, mathematics
and you also learn how to apply it with these electives in the second semester, electives later,
and also econometrics, so how to look at data and
understand what you're seeing.
One of the great things about studying economics is
that it gives you a really good skill set,
especially at SSE. It's very focused on application rather than theory.
So, I use data to form my opinions on what we should do to achieve our goals.
I think it's useful to think about exactly what the degree is trying to prepare you towards.
Our students end up really everywhere. Most people after the Master's would end up
going and working whether in the private sector or with government.
We have former students going to the public sector in Sweden and elsewhere,
big international organizations. We have students going into banking and finance.
We also have lots of students going into consulting.
In all of these settings, they need to be familiar with exactly what you can and can't say with data
and what are the issues that you should be looking at at just making judgements based on information
that comes in. And that's a skill that's relevant for policy making if you're in the government.
That's relevant for making decisions about your business
and it's also one of the fundamental skills that's necessary and it's a compulsory part
of every PhD program in the world.
Economics is really everything.
It's really this toolbox that you can choose to apply to any interesting social science phenomena.
Economics is a way to understand the world.