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Welcome to the Economics Department
Economics is about understanding the behavior of people. In particular, economics seeks to address how the world can be understood based on the incentives that various economic agents face. In practice, the study of economics involves using both conceptual and empirical tools to examine how people make choices. This theoretical and data work is, in turn, crucial in informing policymakers how to make their decisions.
Our majors gain strong quantitative skills through their courses and end up working in a vast array of professions: consulting, healthcare, banking, finance, pharmaceuticals, and real estate, to name a few, while others find careers in non-profit and public sectors. We also send our students to graduate school in law, business, economics, or public policy to name a few.
Our majors also tend to have substantial earning power based on their economics degree. According to the Wall Street Journal’s “Degrees That Pay You Back” data, economics majors have the highest mid-career median salary of any non-engineering major.
So, please come visit us in the department and talk to our many faculty about your future major in economics!
NEWS
- Traders on Polymarket are betting on Harris’s odds of beating Trump, challenging the dominance of conventional pollsIn election race, prediction markets are challenging traditional polling By Seamus Webster | FortuneBefore scientific polling was well established in the late 1930s and early 1940s, economics professor Koleman Strumpf told Fortune that betting markets were where newspapers got their election predictions. “Newspapers would report on this on the front page, […]
- Wake Forest researchers find lack of competition contributes to news biasA new study from Wake Forest University suggests a lack of competition among news outlets contributes to media bias. Full article.
- Disentangling media biasEconomists explain how editorial choices and consumer demand shape news coverage Professor Tommy Leung sat down with WFU News to answer questions about his research with Economics Professor Koleman Strumpf and what they are discovering. Full Article
- Betting markets are useful when politics is chaoticIn the early 20th century, for brief periods, the most frenetic American trading pits were not the raucous markets in which stocks were traded, nor the venues where bonds were exchanged. The real action was in the market for betting on the next president. “Crowds formed in the financial district…and brokers would call out bid and […]
EVENTS
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