The best internship is the one you have got currently. Go for it! In case you don’t have an intern till now or you are uncertain what to do and trying to explore, read further.
My attempt is to give a broad idea of different possibilities which you can opt for, both conventional and unconventional. These are based on what I have realized overtime.
Before beginning, I would like to say that in general Economists are few (with Economists, I mean certified ones) and only large companies hire them (one, two or may be three) full time. Yes, there are lots of analysts in the firms and their role is to implement, test and improve, the economic models developed by economists, of their own firm or by economics/finance/statistics professors working in universities. So, in general, the internships to undergrads offered in large firms are of testing the models. Same is the kind of internships in universities. You will be required to do data collection, filtering, and fitting onto the model and verifying it. This is obvious, as any model development needs conceptualization for which Economists are needed, and you are still not one (certified!) so you are less trustworthy. Also economic institutions are a few and all budding economists want to go there as these are the names that come first when the Google keywords like "Economics," "Internship," "training," "Finance," and naturally fourth year would be preferred over third and third over second. So, in case your seniors have not found an intern yet, and you have one, Trust me you are Very Lucky!
These are the general internship work descriptions that are done in conventional economics firms or universities. Some students do get path breaking internships where they work actually as economists. But here, I wish to write for the junta who either have mailed a lot by now and received several rejections or want to do something practical during their holidays or are quite frustrated learning there neighbors have their summers engaged and they are still jobless.
Don't be "koop-manduk" in thinking about Economics internships as the ones related to Demand-Supply or Finance or Policy research only. In the rush of applying, what we forget is that Economics is much more than conventional centers. In fact any recent economic activity is highly interdisciplinary, like socio-economic, behavioral economics, health-care economics, and neural economics. Some places where economics is happening are in design department, hotels, shops, e-commerce, advertisement industry, start-ups, small firms, SMEs operating in any sector, journalism both print and media, NGOs, etcetera. In short, wherever balance sheet is involved and there is cash-flow, a budding economist has ample opportunity to observe the activity, try plotting/quantifying it on paper to come up with a pattern/plot. This is how any real life modeling is done. To do this, all that one needs, is an elementary micro and macro courses and a keen sense of observation and patience to think of various permutations and combinations to come up with a pattern (even no pattern is a pattern) at different levels macro or micro. Just wear your Economics Lenses.
To elaborate on my point, say how you fit in a Design place. They work on product development. You can have a crucial role to play by finding out about potential market, product pricing, fund allocation for advertisement, product development, operations, credit facility, patent procedure and so on. These are important areas on which they anyways have to work, even in the absence of an economist. So, you can have a vital role to play over there and your work will be respected as well because any day you are better than a non-trained person. Even at a micro level, you can be at the shop floor and understand the purchasing behaviour of customers by changing the location and visibility of product from the counter, or cuisines order in restaurants to find a pattern in ordering preference. The advantage at such a place is that they would always want to maximize their sales but can never hire a certified Economist. In Economics discipline, the best jobs today are the ones where the economists are building models. And in unconventional places, you will have this opportunity. Even a good and relevant research in university today, involves surveys and data collection from the people.
Such an internship opportunity would develop one, a practical market experience for you and second, a niche specialization of that industry where you can always apply off-campus for job.
Some further scopes are like working with a corporate lawyer, even just sitting with him teaches a lot. Tourism service provider firms are also wonderful both in terms of adventure and economic learning scope of tourism industry. Internet policy research and censoring information are also potential fields.
Wherever money exchange is involved, one has an opportunity to learn economics. It is all about analyzing the phenomenon around you with Economic Lenses. Say for example, your Canteen.... there is practically all economics and strategy making is applied everyday by the Canteen-wale bhaiya, to sell his products.
This article by Hal Varian is a good starting point: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/how.pdf
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
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