Economics Ba's and Ph.D.'s from Liberal Arts Colleges : Do Degree Requirements or Faculty Scholarship Matter?

We investigate how economics degree requirements and faculty scholarship at 106 elite liberal arts colleges in the United States are related to the percent of a college's students who major in economics and the percent of a college's graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. in economics. We find that degree requirements are related to these educational outcomes in a natural way. Additional requirements tend to drive undergraduates away from the major, while imposing more technical requirements is associated with more graduates eventually earning a Ph.D. in economics. Faculty scholarship is positively related to the number of undergraduate majors, but only at the top 40 colleges. In terms of affecting Ph.D. creation, faculty scholarship has a positive effect but only at the top 40 colleges that do not offer an undergraduate business degree. In particular, a one standard deviation increase in faculty publications is associated with a department producing one more economics Ph.D. about once every four years