10 Best World Universities to Study Economics

March 18th, 2007
Tags: Economic Universities, Economist profession

In every field of education there are brand-name universities serving as the superior level for specialist of all countries. Their graduates are set as examples of top-quality expertise and professionalism, and are to occupy the very best jobs in governments, corporations and international organizations.

Economic universities are no exception. Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford, LSE are familiar to you, arent’ they?

Let’s see which ones are in the lead of first-class economic education securing prime specialists in banking, finance, business administration, accountancy, marketing, commerce, international relations, etc.

On the basis of THES World University Rankings, Guardian University Guide, Times’ Good University Guide and some other investigations, Economister has composed a list of Best of the Best Economics Schools Worldwide:

London School of Economics and Political Science

Founded in 1895, it was established to further the Fabian Society aim of bettering society, focusing on research on issues of poverty, inequality and related issues.

The LSE is exclusively dedicated to the study of social sciences and offers no natural science programmes. Numerous traits of the LSE, such as its world class academic research, specialisation in the social sciences, highly qualified and international students, and central location in London, make it an attractive environment in which to study the social sciences.

LSE is regarded as Europe’s premier institution to study anthropology, economics, gender, international relations, operational research, philosophy of science, political science, sociology and social policy. The school also has world class departments in accounting and finance, economic history, human geography, international history, law, and social psychology.

There is fierce competition for entry to the degree programmes at the LSE. On average, around 11.8 candidates apply for every available place at the undergraduate level, making it the most competitive university in the UK.

Courses are taught in over thirty research centres and twenty-one departments, including Accounting and Finance, Management, Anthropology, Economic History, Economics, The Development Studies Institute, the European Institute, the Gender Institute, Geography and Environment, Government, Industrial Relations, Information Systems, International History, International Relations, Law, Mathematics, Mannheim Centre for Criminology & Criminal Justice, Media and Communications, Operational Research, Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, Social Policy, Social Psychology, Sociology, and Statistics.

Harvard Economic Department

Founded in 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher education in the USA. Gregory Mankiw, the author of famous manuals on economics, and Martin Feldstein, now the president and CEO of National Bureau of Economic Research,
are among the most famous Harvard economists.

Harvard Business School and Harvard Economics Department are two divisions concerned with economics, but HBS is more of a business-oriented high school when Economics Department is a department of Arts and Science Faculty.

The business school’s faculty are divided into ten academic units:

• Accounting and Management
• Business, Government and the International Economy
• Entrepreneurial Management
• Finance
• General Management
• Marketing
• Negotiation, Organizations
• Markets
• Organizational Behavior
• Strategy
• Technology and Operations Management.

It is the creator of far-famed MBA program.

Harvard’s library collection contains more than 15 million volumes, making it the fourth largest of the five “mega-libraries”; of the world (after the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the French Bibliotheque
Nationale, but ahead of the New York Public Library).

Cambridge + Oxford = Oxbridge

The universities of Cambridge and Oxford are sometimes referred as Oxbridge – the two oldest in the english-speaking world.

Cambridge. Faculty of Economics

University of Cambridge, located in Cambridge, England, consists of various colleges and university itself, comprising the faculty of Economics. It was created by Alfred Marshall in 1903 as a undergraduate degree course that later became the Faculty of Economics and Politics. By then Marshall had already published his great Principles of Economics.

Between the Wars, the Faculty was extraordinarily innovative, witnessing the birth of modern macro-economics and a revolution in micro-economics. The dominant figure was Marshall’s pupil John Maynard Keynes who, throughout his life, moved fruitfully between academic thought and public policy.

Among other contributors to faculty’s progress are Denis Robertson, Richard Kahn, Austin Robinson, Maurice Dobb, Piero Sraffa, Nicholas Kaldor and Frank Hahn, famous nobelists - Richard Stone, James Meade, Sir James Mirrlees, Amartya Sen.

Another tradition upheld by current Faculty members is that of involvement in public policy, active on, among other bodies, the Monetary Policy Committee, the Competition Commission, the Low Pay Commission, and the Accounting Standards Board. As the Faculty of Economics and Politics approaches its hundredth birthday, it remains committed to keeping economics useful.

Oxford’s Department of Economics

Oxford attracts students and scholars from across the globe, with almost a quarter of our students from overseas. More than 130 nationalities are represented among a student population of over 18,000.

Its edifices are medieval cottages, churches and castles.

The Department of Economics provides a focus for a very diverse and internationally renowned group of academic economists. In many areas, such as auction theory, econometrics, economic history, industrial organisation and development economics, current Oxford faculty have made major recent research based contributions to modern economics.

The Department teaches around 200 graduate and 1000 undergraduate students.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The MIT Economics Department today is a vibrant collection of faculty and students. The Department’s distinguished scholars have received numerous awards, including three Nobel Prizes (Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, and the late Franco Modigliani), and many are Fellows of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society. Many faculty members have served in various elected offices of the American Economic Association and the Econometric Society. The Department offers exceptional opportunities for undergraduate and graduate study and research.

The Department continues to attract a very large undergraduate student enrollment. During the 2005-06 academic year, 2,114 undergraduates enrolled in economics courses, 111 undergraduates chose to major in economics, 121 chose to minor in economics, and another 325 took economics as a concentration. Many undergraduate majors, as well as students from other departments at MIT, participated in research projects supervised by the faculty.

Each year the MIT Ph.D. program enrolls about 22 candidates selected from approximately 700 applicants. Roughly half of these students have undergraduate degrees from American universities; others come from Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia.

Student dissertation topics span a wide range of issues in microeconomics and macroeconomics. Dissertations include theoretical work, applied data analysis, and econometric methodology.

Stanford Economics Department

Economics has been taught at Stanford since the University opened for classes in 1891. The first Ph.D. was awarded in 1896 to Mary Roberts Smith, for her thesis on the Almshouse Women of San Francisco. At that time the department included political science and sociology as well as economics.

Following World War II, under the leadership of Bernard Haley, Edward Shaw, and Moses Abramovitz, Stanford rose to national and international prominence in economics. In the early 1960s, the department became known as a center for economic theory, particularly the summer gatherings of leading theorists from around the world. This tradition continues to the present day. A major presence at the summer sessions from the outset was Kenneth Arrow, who joined the department in 1949 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1972.

In the 1960s, the department was also a center of expertise in Economic Development and Economic History, including such figures as Abramovitz, Tibor Scitovsky, Hollis Chenery, Emile Despres. John Gurley and Edward Shaw pioneered the study of relationships between finance and economic development.

As of the 1990s, Stanford has regularly been ranked among the top handful of graduate economics programs in the nation.

Nowadays, the department’s purposes are to acquaint students with the economic aspects of modern society, to familiarize them with techniques for the analysis of contemporary economic problems and to develop in them an ability to exercise judgment in evaluating public policy. There is training for the general student as well as for those who plan careers as economists in civil service, private enterprise, teaching, or research.

School of Economics Peking University

The School of Economics of Peking University was established in 1985.

It is one of the most prominent economics research institutions in China, with a strong faculty consisting of both distinguished senior scholars and a large number of young academic leaders. Presently there are 22 professors, 28 associate professors, 17 assistant professors and 32 post-doctoral research fellows.

The school is also one of China’s major institutions for the training of economics professionals. Currently, it has six academic departments, including the Department of Economics, the Department of International Economics and Trade, the Department of Finance, the Department of Insurance and Risk Management, the Department of Public Finance and the Department of Environment, Resource, and Development Economics. The graduate program offers master degrees in seven major fields and doctor degree in six fields. The school also has twelve research institutes and one post-doctoral research
station, which was the first of its kind ever established in China.

University College London,
Department of Economics

The Chair of Political Economy at UCL was created in 1828 - establishing the first Department of Economics in England with the support of funds raised in memory of David Ricardo. The modern department has an outstanding international reputation in key areas of current research including applied theory, microeconometrics, game theory, labour economics, development economics, macroeconomics, industrial economics and environmental economics. It is one of only two economics departments in the UK to achieve the ‘double 5*’ rating in the two most recent national Research Assessment Exercises, achieving the top 5* grade in 1996 and in 2001.

The department offers a number of undergraduate degree programmes, a vigorous Affiliate Studies programme for undergraduate students from US universities, Masters programmes in Economics and in Environmental and Resource Economics, and a structured PhD programme. It is the only ‘double 5*’ department of economics in the UK to also be awarded the top score of 24/24 for the quality of teaching in the QAA Subject Review (2001).

Ecole Normale Superieure

Ecole Normale Superieure is arguably the most prestigious French grande ecole, whose main campus is located around the rue d’Ulm (Ulm Street) in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Today’s Ecole normale superieure is the result of a union in 1985 of the Ecole normale superieure at the rue d’Ulm and the Ecole normale superieure de jeunes filles in Sevres.

For the classic subjects, such as history, geography, philosophy, classic and modern humanities and social science, the highest teaching certification examination (agregation) is a compulsory part of the curriculum. Preparation for this exam, which is provided by the School, unites unregistered students and normaliens, and creates a core pole of excellence that is fundamental
to the preparation of this demanding examination. Any scientific students who wish, either for their personal advancement or because they intend to teach preparatory programs for the Grande Ecole entrance exams, can also prepare to take the agregation either before or after their DEA.

The ENS does not award any diplomas. Students enroll at university to obtain their final honors and postgraduate diploma, followed by their thesis. This structure, which enables the School to attract the best students, also creates lasting bonds with the University that continue throughout each student’s university career.

University of Tokyo

The University of Tokyo, abbreviated as Todai, is one of the leading research universities in Japan.

The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, some 2,100 of them foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongo, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano.

The rapid progress of financial theory has stimulated enhanced innovations and global competition in the world financial system for the last quarter century. Advancements in asset management techniques, corporate finance, and risk management technologies have brought about a remarkable increase in the efficiency of capital, but they have also revealed some of the inherent flaws in various aspects of the economic system.

Today, the strengthening of financial research and education has become a driving force greatly contributing to the balanced growth of the world economy as the discipline learns from past mistakes and accumulates further advances in knowledge.

In recognition of these trends, the Graduate School of Economics established the Finance Program in April 2005 with two main objectives: to cultivate world-class financial scholars and to create a talented group of graduates who will lead the financial world in Japan.

The University of Tokyo puts the following three-pillar plan into effect in order to stablish itself as a global base for financial education and research:

(1) The Finance Program within the Graduate School of Economics
(2) The Center for Advanced Research in Finance
(3) Establish the Undergraduate Department of Finance

Links

The Times Higher Education Supplement - World University Rankings
The Guardian 2006 University league Table
The Times Good University Guide
The Sunday Times University Guide