Economics
Economics is the science of everyday life. It is the study of how firms, governments, and individuals alike make decisions in interaction with institutions, markets, and society; how they respond to the incentives placed before them; and how they allocate scarce resources. In this view, economics is everywhere and, thus, highly relevant. It can also be fun as well as intellectually rewarding. It equips students with the tools with which to analyse questions about the design of institutions, discrimination and inequality, and the environment and equity among others.
Economics at Yale-NUS covers a breadth of questions and methodologies that intersect fields like anthropology, computer science, history, mathematic, political science, psychology, sociology, and statistics. Here is a link to research papers from the American Economic Association (AEA) website that illustrates what economics is about and how it connects with our day-to-day lives.
A very useful website is the American Economic Association (AEA) website which provides information and helpful tips on studying economics in college. The AEA also provides good information about what careers follow after an undergraduate degree in economics.
Economics is not a professional programme as is architecture, for example. As a liberal arts major, its primary goal is to offer students with in-depth training and wide-ranging exposure to long-standing issues in economics. The programme at Yale-NUS College not only well–equips students for careers in analysis, but also for graduate school or professional programmes like law after graduation.
Yale-NUS graduates majoring in Economics have often gone into the banking, finance, and management consulting as well as, increasingly, into the technology sectors. Some have also gone on to pursue graduate studies in fields as varied as art history, business administration, and economics. Across the board, our graduates have commanded some of the highest starting salaries among the College’s majors.
For one, a lot of the emphasis of the Economics major is on understanding choice: how to model it and how to use data to test related hypotheses. Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) puts more emphasis on aspects that are perhaps more intellectual in their orientation. Hence, PPE gives its students some exposure to ideas in economics, but it does not have as strong of a focus on data analysis and mathematical modelling.
Particularly for students interested in graduate school but also for all students more generally, it is a good idea to take courses from the Mathematical, Computational & Statistical Sciences major such as (advanced) calculus, linear algebra, real analysis, and statistical programming.
