I was on vacation for a couple of days, and I'm trying to read through everything that accumulated in blogspot.

I was struck by two contradictory articles (to which I do not have the links). One looked at economics Ph.D. graduates, and attempted to determine if an academic career was based more on the student's own intellectual prowess, or the luck of what the job market held that year. Guess what? It's the luck of the draw: graduate in a good year if you can.

The other article was also looking, I believe, at business and finance students, and was remarking that a person's institution no longer mattered as much. The Internet had flattened out patterns of collaboration, and now people from less well regarded schools could co-author with others from high-prestige schools.

So, that's the view from the dismal science: timing is everything, geography no longer matters.