What fraction of Economics Ph.D. oral defenses end
up in failure?

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Request for Question Clarification by welte-ga on 24 Dec 2005 07:24 PST

Hi Bill,  

According to one source, there have been only a few studies of
completion of Ph.D. degrees in economics.  I haven't found specific
information on Ph.D. candidates in economics who don't pass their oral
defenses, but have found some detailed studies on economics graduate
students who don't complete their Ph.D.  Would this type of
information suffice as an answer to your question?

       -welte-ga

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Clarification of Question by billbauer-ga on 24 Dec 2005 07:48 PST

No, it would not...  I am interested in the likelihood of not getting
a degree, after one is cleared to hold an oral defense.

Dear Bill, 

The question is, with these fractions, whether it matters at all. Lets
say that one in 100,000 candidates fails the oral defense. In such
numbers, it could be related to verious, idenpendent, variables, that
would not tell us what are the chances of a "typical" PhD candidate to
fail.

In a nutshell, this could be a great explanation to the failure of
economists in general, laying to much importance on statistics and to
little on psychological and sociological reasons for people to act the
way they do.

I agree that there is no difference between 0.001 and 0.0001 - both
would mean that failure is an unlikely event.  However, I feel there
would be a difference between 0.03 and 0.001.  I would interpret the
first one as "it might actually happen", and the second one as
"chances are that it won't happen"...