What a Difference a Ph.D. Makes: More than Three Little Letters

For those working in quantitative finance, this has been expected for a while. Now, there is some good solid research backing up this claim. The full paper is available here.

"Several hundred individuals who hold a Ph.D. in economics, finance, or others fields work for institutional money management companies. The gross performance of domestic equity investment products managed by individuals with a Ph.D. (Ph.D. products) is superior to the performance of non-Ph.D. products matched by objective, size, and past performance for one-year returns, Sharpe Ratios, alphas, information ratios, and the manipulation-proof measure MPPM. Fees for Ph.D. products are lower than those for non-Ph.D. products. Investment flows to Ph.D. products substantially exceed the flows to the matched non-Ph.D. products. Ph.D.s’ publications in leading economics and finance journals further enhance the performance gap."

MBA Price and School Accreditation Have Little Impact on Demand

Here is an article from The Economist that is making the rounds. Rapidly rising tuition fees seem to have little impact on MBA applications.

"A school’s position in The Economist or the Financial Times ranking, however, has little impact on applications. Indeed, where an effect can be seen, it seems that rising in the rankings leads to fewer applicants. The researchers suspect that this may be because weaker students are put off from speculative applications. Another thing that apparently has no effect on applications is whether the school is accredited."


In the US, MBA degrees have grown faster than the population.Between 1971 and 2008, the number of new MBAs increased by a whopping 487.5% while the US population increased by 46.6%.

Can the trend continue?