Will producing an article rather than a thesis during my MS be an issue for PhD admissions in Europe?

Question

I’m in my second year of a Master’s program in international trade. At my university, there aren’t many supervisors available. Anyway, there’s this professor I approached, but I haven’t officially confirmed my topic with him yet. He didn’t like the work I’ve done so far. That’s not the main issue though. The issue is that this professor doesn’t want a mémoire (thesis); he wants a 20-page article. I don't know how to write an academic article, but that's okay, it's an opportunity to learn something new.

My concern is whether, when I apply for PhD programs in Europe in the coming years, not having a thesis and only having an article will cause issues with acceptance. I've never heard of anyone doing a master's without completing a thesis. If that’s the case, there’s no point in working with this professor, and I’ll have to look for another supervisor.

Answer 1

Looking from the outside in: the standard research output in economics is an article, not a monograph. Since a PhD program is how you learn how to do research, you need to master the art of writing the default form of research output. This is in your case the article. So having already some experience with that format, is actually a (minor) bonus.

However, I would say that the potential impact is so minor that I would use other considerations to make that decision. For example, your statement that "He didn’t like the work I’ve done so far", would worry me much more than the distinction between article and thesis.

Answer 2

My concern is whether, when I apply for PhD programs in Europe in the coming years, not having a thesis and only having an article will cause issues with acceptance. I've never heard of anyone doing a master's without completing a thesis.

I find it unlikely to be an issue. Any reasonably international doctoral program will have rules that account for a certain degree of variability of what different things mean in different countries. If anything, universities in Europe are more aware of structural differences between different higher education systems than universities elsewhere, as even within Europe every country has their own, sometimes entirely different, rules and conventions.

As an example, here in Sweden, admission to the doctoral school of the computer science department at Chalmers "only" requires a second-cycle degree that is sufficiently related to the subject you are planning to study. If not obvious, determination of whether your degree counts as "second-cycle" and "sufficiently related" falls to the head of the doctoral school and your potential examiner in collaboration with your supervisor. Technicalities such as whether your final report was a thesis or an article would be very unlikely to influence this assessment.