Life in Economic Consulting

About two months ago, I began my first full-time job as an analyst at an economic consulting firm. As a member of the team, I conduct economic analysis on a wide range of issues across the lifespan of commercial litigation and regulatory proceedings. Located at the unique intersection of the law, business, finance, and economics, economic consulting firms aid experts in their analysis of the case in question. Under the experts’ direction, we apply both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover the economic phenomena at play in a given case. As such, these firms are a great primer for a career in research in any of the fields covered by practice areas of the firm.

So far, a job in economic consulting has allowed me to think much more deeply about applied issues in finance and economics. In particular, I’ve expanded my repertoire of research skills and approaches that should be useful for any field of study. For my preferred areas of Industrial Organization and Arts Economics, the kinds of cases economic consulting firms are retained on have already inspired me to think about the role of information in financial decision-making, and of the limits and boundaries of intellectual property rights.

For example, what do investors consider to be material information? When and how do they use information about a financial instrument? When are expectations about an instrument absorbed into its price, if at all? When an expectation becomes a confirmed (or a disconfirmed) fact, should we expect a movement in the price of that instrument? And of course, the classic question: are investors entirely rational?

As for intellectual property rights—and this relates to my previous post on this blog—what are the boundaries between creator and contributor to a given work? Particularly when it comes to the issue of copyrights for creative works—how small of a change in somebody else’s work is enough to grant the editor a claim over the transformed work? Can “concepts” ever be fully claimed by an “owner”? And how long should copyrights even last?

All in all, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the work, the people, and the culture of the last two months in economic consulting. I’m eager to learn many more skills and gain an even better understanding of the quantitative and qualitative methods involved in researching topics in the law, finance, and economics. Economic consulting is highly recommended to those with some interest in any of these fields.

Any views expressed in this post regarding the work involved in economic consulting are mine only and do not necessarily reflect those of my peers or the firm I work for.