What Makes Hopkins Unique?

Johns Hopkins was the first research university in the United States; designed from its inception to promote research and the training of scholars. It began the nation's first scholarly journal in 1876 with the American Journal of Mathematics and The Johns Hopkins University Press is the oldest continuously operated university press in the nation. Research and graduate education defined Hopkins at its origins and this has continued to this day. Hopkins is, above all else, an institution for training scholars.

Given the university's defining emphasis on research and graduate education, it is not surprising that the Department of Economics (originally, the Department of Political Economy) has a significant history within the economics profession. The University awarded its first Ph.D. in political economy in 1878 to Henry Adams who later became a distinguished professor at the University of Michigan and a co-founder of the American Economic Association. Richard T. Ely was on the faculty in the Department's early years and is honored with the Richard T. Ely Lecture at the annual meetings of the AEA. Foreshadowing the future direction of the profession, Ely and Simon Newcomb, a Professor of Mathematics at Hopkins, engaged in a contentious academic dispute about the role of mathematics in economics. Newcomb supported its usage while Ely argued for the historical approach. Ironically, while Newcomb's view has prevailed, it is Ely who is honored with a distinguished lecture at the AEA Meetings! The list of faculty and visitors at Hopkins over the years is an exciting and eclectic one.

There are many superb graduate economic programs. In the midst of this excellence, we believe the Department of Economics at Hopkins has a singular style to offer. The PhD program is and always has been our primary focus. Every member of the faculty is heavily involved in the training of our graduate students. All faculty teach in the graduate program with some doing so exclusively. All faculty are actively involved in thesis supervision and research seminars. While many if not most PhD-granting departments have become quite large with 30 or more faculty members, our department has remained intimate with 15 professors. While this offers both advantages and disadvantages compared to larger departments, it does mean that Hopkins offers a relatively unique environment that, depending on the student, could be appropriate for them.

In considering size, the obvious disadvantage to being smaller than average is that we offer fewer fields. As described in Faculty and Research Environment, we've developed a departmental strategy of depth rather than breadth by focusing our resources on maintaining strong research and teaching cores in Applied Microeconomics, Economic Theory, and Macroeconomics with Econometrics being covered by the Applied Micro and Macro groups. The objective is to produce well-trained applied microeconomists, macroeconomists, and economic theorists.

The upside to being small is that Hopkins provides a collegial environment in which students routinely interact with faculty, not only in the classroom but in the coffee room, seminars, hallways, and social gatherings. Students do not get lost here. One of the primary challenges of a graduate program is to help students make the transition from student to scholar, to where the faculty are colleagues rather than mentors. The small, collegial, and interactive environment at Hopkins is conducive to this critical but challenging transition.

The Department of Economics in Images