Research Career with International Focus

Hello all,

I know that this forum is geared towards those seeking a traditional MBA, but I have a bit of a different interest. Would business school make sense for someone seeking a career with a focus on international research? I am interested in international relations, macroeconomics, and finance, so a career in research appears to be on the cutting edge of these three disciplines. Something like country/sovereign risk at a major/central bank, EM/international security research, or macroeconomic analysis at a supranational/ international FI sound incredibly exciting to me.

What is the best avenue to a career like this? A cursory search on LinkedIn shows a decent amount of people with graduate degrees in public policy/international relations of some sort. I used to see myself getting an MBA, but after some research it does not sound like that is necessary, or makes any sense. I also have no interest in getting a PhD. I understand that these industries can be very hard to break into, but I'm just hoping to see what others think.

 
Best Response

What's FI? To me that's fixed income but I don't think that's what you mean.

The people I know involved in that world tend to be PhD economists, quant economists PhD's, maybe public policy PhD's, PhD's with a focus on a certain country, etc. You may notice that I've attached PhD to most of them. World Bank, the Fed and other central banks, and NGO's (the top research guys at big banks could also be thrown in here but I don't know anyone in that world) tend to be populated more with academics than MBA's and their careers consist of going in and out of these types of organizations, academia and actual govt jobs.

 

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