Congratulations to the seniors who defended their Economic theses earlier this week. I defended mine 20 years ago. Special thanks to my adviser, Mike McPherson, for guiding me through the process. Sad to know that I can’t ever again thank Peter Lipton for his generous reading. Comments:

1) Kudos to the Economics Department for taking the time and trouble to arrange (doc) practice sessions last week for the presenters. This is a bother for all concerned but certainly improves the quality of the presentations.

2) In past years, the Department has provided copies of theses on-line. Why not this year? I still wish that the Department would post and archive the comments that professors make on theses. I doubt that this has happened yet, but perhaps some day. Note that skeptics used to mock my efforts to post theses on-line, yet now there is a web page at the library devoted to this effort. We play a long game here at EphBlog.

3) Economics students who want the results of their theses to be read by hundreds of people (as have the results from Jen Doloec ‘03 and Lindsay Taylor ‘05) should write about Williams. Even better (especially if you are interested in graduate school) would be to ask Morty to be your adviser. (Recommendations from famous economists like Morty mean a great deal in the graduate school application process.) Topics? How should we measure “intellectual vitality” and is the Williams admissions office able to identify it a prior? What factors predict dropping out from Williams? What factors prediction satisfaction with the Williams experience? (See some of Morty’s comments to College Council.) How can we predict which applicants accepted by Williams will choose to enroll? (I think that Institutional Data guru Chris Winters ‘95 is already working on this topic, but I am sure that he/Morty would be happy to collaborate with an undergraduate.)

4) Readers are free to give thanks and reminisce about their own thesis presentations in the comments.