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Indiana University Indianapolis

Department of economics.

Ph.D. in Economics

In our Ph.D. program, which specializes in health economics, you will begin with core training in economic theory and econometrics, emphasizing microeconomic theory and microeconometrics.

The program offers a two-course field sequence in health economics as well as a course focusing on the institutional context of health, health care, and health insurance.

Additionally, you will take Ph.D. minor courses in a field such as biostatistics, epidemiology, bioethics, or health policy, giving you the necessary background for working in the interdisciplinary teams with whom health economists often interact.

In addition to econometric theory, we will also offer a year-long empirical econometrics sequence, emphasizing statistical packages, working with large datasets, problems in applied econometrics and proposal writing.

Our program features strong disciplinary training in micro economic theory, econometrics, and health economics enhanced with exposure to other related disciplines central to health and healthcare.

Admission Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university
• Minimum 3.0 grade point average on a scale of 4, with a minimum 3.0 average in the major field.
• Course sequence in univariate& multivariate calculus (equivalent to MATH M165, M166, & M261 at IUPUI.)
• Linear algebra (equivalent to Math M351 at IUPUI).
• Either Statistics or Econometrics:calculus-based undergraduate level course in probability or statisticsOR- any undergraduate statistics course plus a course in introductory econometrics (equivalent to E270 and E470 at IUPUI).
• Intermediate Microeconomic Theory (equivalent to E321 at IUPUI)
• Course sequence in Mathematical Analysis (equivalent to Math M441 and Math M442 at IUPUI).
• Additional courses in Economics.
• Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test (Quantitative, Verbal and Analytical Writing).
• Successful candidates typically have quantitative scores at or above 155 (new scoring system) or 700 (old scoring system). Analytical Writing and Verbal scores can be somewhat lower.
• Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). We generally look for TOEFL scores of 100 or better.
• International English Language Testing System IELTSThe minimum acceptable IELTS score is 6.5; in practice, we look for an IELTS of 7 or more. It is required that applicants take the academic reading and writing modules, not the general training reading and writing modules. Undergraduate Record

Application Expectations

Applications will be viewed in their entirety wherein a candidate’s outstanding qualifications in one area can be balanced against more marginal qualifications in another dimension. However, admission is competitive and financial support is even more competitive. Most of the students, who are admitted and supported, will exceed the minimal requirements.

University Fellowships

The University also awards one-year University Fellowships to a highly select group of incoming Ph.D. students. This Fellowship includes no work requirement. The University Fellowship stipend is $22,500 and, in addition to tuition and health insurance as above, includes a travel allowance for conference travel. Students who receive University Fellowships in their first year are awarded a Teaching or Research Assistantship in the subsequent four years at a stipend level of $22,000.

Contact, Professor Wendy Morrison , Graduate Program Director

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People First - Alumni honoree builds relationships, gives back

For 2024 Daniels School Young Alumni Award winner Carlos Banks (BS ’08), the Purdue experience is about people.

It began with his aunt, Vanita Banks, an alumna and 2006 Old Master who introduced him to the university and accompanied him on his first visit. It continued with Dr. Cornell A. Bell, the late director of the Daniels School’s Business Opportunity Program (BOP), who cemented his decision to attend Purdue.

“Everything Dr. Bell said really resonated with me,” Banks says. “After that, going to Purdue was a done deal. I didn’t apply anywhere else.”

In addition to BOP, Banks — a finance and accounting major — was also heavily involved on campus, serving as president of the Society of Minority Managers, president of the Management Ambassadors and treasurer of the 82nd Class of the Purdue Chapter of the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society.

He was also a member of the President’s Council and Purdue Black Student Union and received numerous honors, including the Dr. Cornell A. Bell Award, the Purdue Black Caucus Academic and Leadership Awards, and the Outstanding Senior Award, among others.

“I had the opportunity to grow and learn with people from a diverse array of backgrounds,” Banks says. “Those lessons were just as important as what I learned in the classroom.”

Banks began his career in professional financial services on Wall Street, spending time at both Goldman Sachs and Deloitte. “I remember my first day at Goldman Sachs vividly,” he says. “They brought in all the new analysts and had us take a series of tests to gauge our business skills. A lot of people struggled, but thanks to the courses I took at Purdue, it was a cakewalk for me.”

After four years in New York City, Banks felt his interest in finance waning. “I no longer had a strong passion for it,” he says. “It didn't really drive me to where I wanted to go, so I began thinking about the next chapter of my career.”

Banks decided to leverage his interest in technology with his foundational skills in business, returning to school to earn his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and his Master of Engineering Management (MEM) from the McCormick School of Engineering – both at Northwestern University. While there, he also completed an internship with Groupon Mobile and worked part-time at Apple.

Upon completing graduate school, Banks joined Genpact – a specialty consulting and execution firm focusing on enterprise process transformation, business analytics and information technology. As assistant vice president and global relationship manager, he oversaw business development and client relationship management for multiple Fortune 500 companies in the consumer goods and retail industries.

Banks’ next career move was to the multinational professional services firm Accenture, where as managing director he focused on the operations business. His work with his clients revolved around harnessing data, automation, analytics and applied intelligence to drive process transformation across large-scale enterprise functions such as finance, marketing, customer service and HR.

Today, Banks is a partner in strategic transformation for IBM, working with senior client executives across a wide range of industries to shape critical enterprise transformation initiatives at the intersection of technology and business.

Indeed, Banks remains a “tech geek” at heart and loves exploring and learning about the latest and greatest in the consumer tech world – the most recent being high-fidelity headphones and audio gear. “I’m more likely to read Gizmodo in the morning than The Wall Street Journal or Financial Times ,” he says.

Given the varied stops on his own career path, Banks advises current students not to worry too much about their first job. “Ten years from now, there will be jobs that didn’t even exist today,” he says. “Rather than focusing on money, you need to know what you like and what's most important to you. If you do that, the opportunities will come.”

Banks also remains passionate about giving back to his alma mater, whether it’s through financial gifts or his time. He serves on the boards of the Purdue Black Alumni Organization and Daniels School Alumni Association, is a member of the BOP Leadership Council, and volunteers for Management Leadership for Tomorrow and Sponsors for Educational Opportunity.

“I’m committed to remaining active in organizations that have had a major impact on my life,” he says. “I fully appreciate those who have helped me, and that’s what drives me to help others.”

Funding endowed chair in agricultural economics reflects couple’s global vision brought home: “Purdue is special in our lives”

• Story by Nancy Alexander
• Photos by Bosch Studios Photography
• May 13, 2024

B ob and Karen Thompson have operated as a team, both throughout their 55-year marriage and in their long-standing commitment to sending Purdue Agriculture students abroad and welcoming international students to their home.

Now the Thompsons are strengthening the international focus of Bob’s former department by endowing the Robert and Karen Thompson Chair in International Agricultural Economics. The couple hopes the position will ensure a leading scholar in an international aspect of the discipline such as trade, development or comparative agricultural policy “to help solidify the commitment to the international focus in the offerings of the department,” he says.

The Thompson Chair is open-ended by design. “As a former dean, I understand that the college has to have the flexibility to respond to greatest needs and opportunities that come along that you never see coming,” Bob says.

Thompson knows about unanticipated opportunities. He grew up in New York state, so close to the Canadian border that the news source in his home was the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which he credits with “more of an international perspective than the average American community would get.”

Despite his emerging interest in international affairs, his options for study abroad were limited. Some local high schools sent students overseas through American Field Service (AFS) programs. “I really wished my little rural high school — I was in a graduating class of 20 — would get an AFS program, but it never did,” he recalls.

Thompson’s focus on agricultural policy emerged as an undergraduate at Cornell University, where he became intrigued by international food issues such as hunger and poverty. He applied for the university’s two study abroad scholarships — and ended up as first runner-up for each of them. Based on his interest, however, officials told him that if he was accepted to another program, Cornell would support him with additional scholarship funds.

Thompson wasn’t selective about his destination. “My first choice was ‘wherever,’” he says.

“Wherever” turned out to be Denmark for his junior year, where he met Karen, then a student in elementary education who grew up on a small farm on the Danish island of Bornholm. The couple maintained a long-distance romance for two years after Bob returned to Cornell and then completed a master’s degree at Purdue.

Shortly after they married in August 1968, the Thompsons went to Laos with International Voluntary Service, a Peace Corps-type program that allowed the two citizens of different countries to serve together, working with local agriculture and home economics extension agents.

Karen immigrated to the U.S. when they returned from Laos in 1970. That summer, they came to Purdue for her to complete her elementary education degree and Bob to begin a PhD program in agricultural economics. After earning her teaching degree in 1971, Karen started a master’s degree in special education.

In summer 1972, the Thompsons went abroad again, this time to Brazil, where Purdue had an institutional strengthening program with the Federal University of Viçosa dating to the 1950s. Bob collected data for his thesis and taught agricultural production economics in Portuguese, while Karen taught the elementary school-age children of Purdue professors on the Viçosa project.

Now a family of three — their daughter, Kristina, was born in Brazil — the Thompsons returned to Purdue in January 1974. At the May commencement, Karen received her master’s degree, and Bob received his PhD and joined the agricultural economics faculty. Their second child, Eric, arrived a year later. As a faculty member, Bob developed a nationally recognized program in international trade and agricultural development.

In 1983, the family moved to Washington, D.C. for a one-year leave that extended to four. There Bob served as a senior staff economist for the President’s Council on Economic Advisers, and later, assistant secretary for economics for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  

Thompson returned to Purdue as dean of the College of Agriculture in 1987 and was a strong advocate for study abroad.  At the beginning of his tenure, only one student in the College of Agriculture was studying overseas. When he left six-and-a-half years later, 10 percent of agriculture students graduated having had an international experience.

Thompson equates his one year in Denmark, two in Laos and two in Brazil, all within a nine-year time frame, to “a second PhD program.”

Having on-the-ground international experience made me much more effective as a professional doing research in other countries. Agriculture is such a global industry. To be a well-prepared professional in any agricultural occupation requires having a global vision or perspective.” - Bob Thompson

In 1993 Thompson left the dean’s position to return to his passion for developing agriculture and reducing hunger in low-income countries. He became president and chief executive officer of the Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development; and later moved back to Washington, D.C. to become director of rural development for the World Bank.

In Washington, Karen became volunteer curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s lace collection in its American History Museum. Her mother had taught her the basics of bobbin lace, and over time she honed her skills through training courses in several European countries. In addition to research and writing on lace made in colonial Ipswich, Massachusetts, the only U.S. site of a commercial bobbin lace industry, Karen continues to teach online courses on the technique. 

Thompson’s commitment to study abroad laid the groundwork for the nearly 40 percent of Agriculture students who now graduate having studied abroad in hundreds of wide-ranging programs the college offers through International Programs in Agriculture  (IPIA).

The Thompsons were so passionate about providing international opportunities to undergraduates that they endowed the Robert L. and Karen H. Thompson Scholarship to support students who participate in international study programs in agriculture.

IPIA asks the scholarship recipients to send the couple a postcard from their overseas institution. “Those are so nice to receive,” Bob says. “The comment that you hear most often is that it’s ‘a life-changing experience.’ It certainly was for me.”

Ensuring that agriculture students experience different cultures firsthand is good for Indiana agriculture, Karen adds. “It’s great for the ones who go back on the farms, but for the ones who are hired by agribusiness, the firms want international experience.”

Bob credits Karen for managing family and hosting responsibilities while he taught, conducted research and served in administrative positions. In addition to raising bicultural and bilingual children, the Thompsons regularly welcomed international students and friends to their home. Karen recalls learning to prepare an American Thanksgiving dinner before she had ever had one herself.

“Our children grew up with the American part of the family, the Danish part of the family, but also the international students at Purdue, because they really became our third family, to us and our children,” she says. “And it’s so important for the international students to get to know an American home and family.”

Not surprisingly, the travel bug also bit the Thompsons’ children. Kristina studied in Denmark in high school and college before volunteering with the Peace Corps in Benin and later, in Rwanda with her husband, Tom. The couple currently is assigned to Cotonou, Benin, where she is the Peace Corps’ country program and training director, and Tom teaches in the international school.

Both Eric and his wife, Amy, are Purdue graduates. Eric spent his junior year in Purdue Engineering at a German university and completed graduate study at the Danish Technical University. He now works in human hearing research for the Air Force. Their son is a high school senior, and their two daughters both studied abroad as college students.

“You detect a pattern here?” Bob asks, smiling.

The international perspective that the Thompsons cultivated in their own home has over time changed the College of Agriculture, by broadening student horizons through study abroad, and now, in a new chair in agricultural economics that promises to impact teaching and research.

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Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics

• Degree Programs

6.0. Doctor of Philosophy Degree Program

The doctoral program in Agricultural and Applied Economics is designed to develop a broad based competence in economic theory and in techniques of quantitative analysis. Dissertation research of students in our department usually addresses applied problems using contemporary economic theory and analytical methods. Students completing our program have demonstrated a high degree of success in academics, business, and government.

Two options are offered for the Doctor of Philosophy in the Agricultural and Applied Economics program. The first option does not require a minor. The second option includes a minor in Family Financial Planning—a joint Ph.D. program between the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics and the College of Human Sciences. Completion of the Doctoral program in Agricultural and Applied Economics with a minor in Family Financial Planning qualifies graduates to take an exam administered by the Certified Financial Planning Board of Standards to become Certified Financial Planners.

6.1. Prerequisites

Most students will have completed the requirements for an M.S. degree or its equivalent before admission to the doctoral program. If the Master's degree does not meet the prerequisite requirements for entering our Master of Science program (see Section 5.1) then those requirements must be met in order to enter the Ph.D. program. Some exceptional students will be offered the opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. directly from a Bachelor's program. In this case, see the Graduate Coordinator for course and program requirements.

Background in algebra, partial and total differentiation, integration and basic matrix or linear algebra operations are very useful to perform well in coursework and research work.

6.2. Credit Hour Requirements

The doctoral program requires a minimum of 60 credit hours of course work beyond the baccalaureate degree and at least 12 credit hours of dissertation research (AAEC 8000).

6.3. Transfer of Credit

Transfer of graduate credit from other academic institutions may be allowed. The request for transfer must be initiated by the student and supported by the student's committee chair. Transfer decisions are made by the department Graduate Coordinator and must be approved by the Graduate School . Information required in support of transfer requests includes academic transcripts and course catalogue descriptions of each course proposed for transfer. Course syllabi may also be requested to support transfer decisions.

6.4. Substitution for Core Courses

Substitutions for core courses are allowed only under unusual circumstances. Requests for substitutions for core courses must be initiated by the student and his or her committee chair, to the department Graduate Coordinator and must be approved by the Graduate School . Final decisions on substitutions for core courses taught outside our department are made by the department Graduate Coordinator . Decisions on core courses taught in the department are made by the current instructor of the core course being replaced.

6.5. Ph.D. Comprehensive Examination

The purpose of the Ph.D. comprehensive examination is to test the student's ability to integrate knowledge from various subject matter areas and apply appropriate concepts and tools to issues and problems relevant to the discipline. The comprehensive exam is administered by a departmental committee twice each year (usually in May and August) and is normally taken at the end of the first full year of coursework. The exam has two parts which are taken separately. Part 1 of the exam focuses econometric methods and Part 2 covers microeconomic theory. Students have two opportunities to pass both parts of the exam. If both parts of the exam are passed on the first attempt then the student has successfully completed this degree requirement. If one or both parts of the exam are failed on the first attempt (usually in May), the student must retake the failed part(s) at the next offering (in the following August). A second failure of either part of the comprehensive exam will result in dismissal from the student's Ph.D. program.

6.6. Qualifying Examination and Admission to Candidacy

Graduate school rules require that all doctoral students successfully complete a Qualifying Examination for admission to candidacy for the doctor's degree. In the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics the Dissertation Proposal Defense serves as the Qualifying Exam. Students are allowed two attempts to satisfactorily complete this examination. Failure to satisfactorily complete the examination on a second attempt will result in dismissal from the Ph.D. program. Further information on the Dissertation Proposal and Proposal Defense is provided in Section 9.0 of this Handbook.

6.7. Final Examination

All doctoral candidates are required to pass a public final oral examination which is usually over the general field of the dissertation. Candidates should consult the Graduate School for details regarding scheduling of the final examination. After the final examination, the professor conducting comprehensive exams will send a written notification of the results to the Graduate Secretary for the student's graduate file.

Doctoral candidates, with their major advisor, are required to find their own Dean's Representative for the Graduate School for their defense, preferably someone outside of the department.

Public announcement of exams will be done through the department Graduate Secretary. Exams must be announced at least four weeks prior to the exam date, without exception.

6.9. Degree Program Course Requirements

Listed below are the course requirements for the Ph.D. program options. Courses listed specifically by number are core courses. Note that the option II course requirements have been revised in consultation with the Department of Personal Financial Planning.

Ph.D in Agricultural and Applied Economics - No Minor Required (option1) 1

Course number / course title / credit hours.

• AAEC 5303 / Advanced Production Economics / 3
• AAEC 5307 / Applied Econometrics I / 3
• AAEC 6316 / Advanced International Trade and Policy / 3
• AAEC 5321 / Research Methodology in Economics/ 3
• AAEC 6302 / Food, Ag., and Nat. Resource Policy Analysis / 3
• AAEC 6305 / Economic Optimization / 3
• AAEC 6308 / Advanced Natural Resource Economics / 3
• AAEC 6310 / Demand and Price Analysis / 3
• AAEC 6311 / Applied Econometrics II / 3
• AAEC 6301 / Microeconomic Theory II / 3
• AAEC 6315 / Applied Microeconomics I / 3
• ECO 5311 / Macroeconomic Theory and Policy / 3
• Committee Approved Field Courses / / 24
• AAEC 8000 / Doctor's Dissertation / 12

Total Credit Hours 72

Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics - Minor in Family Financial Planning (option 2) 1,2

• AAEC 8000 / Doctor's Dissertation / 21
• PFP 5371 / Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning / 3
• PFP 5372 / Asset Management II / 3
• PFP 5373 / Personal Financial Planning Cpstn. / 3
• PFP 5394 / Retirement Planning / 3
• PFP 5497 / Risk Management and Insurance Planning / 4
• PFP 5398 / Estate Planning / 3
• PFP 5362 / Asset Management I / 3
• PFP 5377 / Client Communication and Counseling / 3
• ACCT 5311 / Individual Study in Accounting / 3

total credit hours 85

1 Numbered courses are core courses. 2 Draft revisions pending review and approval of AAEC faculty.

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