[mirker]

The story I’ve heard is the economics undergrads can’t get into economics grad school. This is just a rumor but the sentiment is that undergrads get taught a watered down version of economics theory. Economics theory is potentially very technical and includes game theory and proofs. Even in CS, undergrads take intro theory courses and “bottom out” in their math skills, even though grad-level CS gets much more difficult. Therefore, I’d imagine the primary determinant of this rigor phenomenon is the GPA inflation of the major.

[aer_aea]

This is somewhat true - economics undergrads do get into grad school, though math+econ or an econ degree with lots of math is better. You can just the check the difference between the textbooks for undergrad and graduate economics, eg Principles of Economics by Mankiw (undergrad) and Mas Collel (grad).