Vienna Graduate School of Economics

Over the last years, important universities around Europe have started to set up American-style PhD programs in economics in order to compete with the top US schools and to prevent a permanent brain drain in this scientific domain. Several groups of smaller European schools have joined forces to create common PhD programs, because scale, both in terms of the number of students and the variety of field courses to be offered, is important to attract the very best students internationally. Traditionally, Vienna has had a good international reputation in the area of economics. It is important that this reputation be maintained and reinforced. The creation of a top level PhD program under the name of Vienna Graduate School of Economics is an important step in this direction. The common standard for graduate education in economics around the world is a broad economics PhD program (instead of a specialized program in, say, labor economics or international economics). Such a program has three pillars: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics, each with its underlying specializations. The program that is envisaged here takes this philosophy as a startingpoint. The faculty members of the Vienna Graduate School of Economics are specialists in one of these three areas and either specialize in developing the techniques needed in modern economic research, or they apply these techniques in their fields of specialization. The best researchers in economics that are working in Vienna join forces to create a joint PhD program in the form of a DKPlus. The faculty members that are part of this application are recognized by the international research community as experts in their respective fields and are well connected to the international research community. The program aims at attracting the very best students from Austria and abroad, with a natural focus (due to the location of Vienna in the center of Europe) on talented students in Central and Eastern Europe. Prospective students will be able to spend most of the three years on research for their dissertation. Applicants should have a masters degree in economics with a strong background in the three core areas of the program. All applying students should provide the same information package, including some relevant test scores and will be evaluated accordingly. Students graduating from the Vienna Graduate School of Economics should be able to carry out independent research of the highest academic standards, and they should therefore be able to obtain (international) academic positions or research positions within policy institutions such as the ECB, IMF, World Bank, OECD, etc.