Are too many of our most talented people choosing careers in finance — and, more specifically, in trading, speculating and other allegedly "unproductive" activities?
In the United States, 7.4 percent of total compensation of employees in 2012 went to people working in the finance and insurance industries. Whether that percentage is too high or not, the real issue is that the share is even higher among the most educated and accomplished people, whose activities may be economically and socially useless, if not harmful.
In a survey of elite U.S. universities, Catherine Rampell found that in 2006, just before the financial crisis, 25 percent of graduating seniors at Harvard University, 24 percent at Yale and a whopping 46 percent at Princeton were starting their careers in financial services. Those percentages have fallen somewhat since, but this might be only a temporary effect of the crisis.