Economics and Finance

Why apply for the PhD programme in Queen Mary's School of Economics and Finance?

• The School of Economics and Finance is one of the UK's leading departments, ranked in the top 10 for research power in the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessment.
• The breadth and depth of our expertise enables us to offer courses and supervision in virtually all major areas of economics and finance.
• The School has around 40 research-active staff working in a wide range of research areas, including macroeconomics, microeconomic theory and game theory, applied microeconomics, econometric theory, time series analysis, theoretical and empirical finance, and financial econometrics.
• Staff members typically publish in the leading economics and finance journals, with publications over the 2014 Research Excellence Framework period in journals including Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Finance, and many others. Individual members of staff also have active collaborations with various governmental and non-governmental agencies, including the UK Treasury, the Bank of England, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, OECD, and ILO.
• The School hosts two weekly seminar series with external speakers from institutions in North America and Europe, as well as two internal workshops.
• We have a vibrant community of doctoral students conducting research in economics and finance.
• Our PhD programme has held Economic and Social Research council (ESRC) recognition since 2008 and is affiliated with the QMUL-Goldsmiths Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), which awards ESRC-funded 1+3 year studentships and offers social science training beyond the areas covered by the School.
• PhD students are entitled to a £1,000 yearly research allowance.
• Excellent career opportunities are open to our PhD graduates. Recent placements include lectureships or postdoctoral research positions at universities and research institutions worldwide such as Cambridge, Warwick, York, Leicester, Aarhus, Vienna and IZA. Our graduates are also typically hired by central banking institutions: recent placements include the Bank of England and the Bank of France.

We supervise all related topics.  Examples of recent PhD supervision include:

• Applied economics
• Economic theory
• Econometrics
• Microeconomics
• Macroeconomics
• Financial econometrics
• Financial derivatives
• Asset pricing
• International finance

Requirements

• A full academic transcript (a record of courses taken and grades achieved)
• Applicants must submit documentation of GRE results obtained during the last five years, showing scores for all sections of the examination
• Evidence of your proficiency in English (for international students)
• Resume / Curriculum Vitae
• Two academic referees to send confidential reference letters to econpgadm@qmul.ac.uk
• A research proposal (1000 words)
• IELTS 7.0
• Students must complete the MRes Programme before they can progress on to the PhD.

Scholarships

The School is pleased to be able to offer generous Teaching Assistantships to incoming PhD students. A Teaching Assistantship covers the tuition fees and provides maintenance per annum that includes:

£16000 as the research grant

£4000 for compulsory teaching of 50 hours per annum and associated duties

There is no separate application form for Teaching Assistantship. Applicants for the PhD programme who wish to be considered for the award should indicate this in the PhD application form.

PhD students are also entitled to an additional £1,000 yearly research allowance.

The School also offers ESRC research scholarships funded by the ESRC through the Queen Mary - Goldsmiths joint doctoral training centre. To be considered for the ESRC research scholarship, the application must be received by 31 January and an additional ESCR application form must be attached.