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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

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  America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny
  Economics Professor, Dr. Robert Whaples was quoted in the New York Times!
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  Traders on Polymarket are betting on Harris’s odds of beating Trump, challenging the dominance of conventional polls
  In 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, […]
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  Wake Forest researchers find lack of competition contributes to news bias
  A new study from Wake Forest University suggests a lack of competition among news outlets contributes to media bias.  Full article.

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