The Department of Economics consists of around 30 full-time faculty, 20 post docs and 90 PhD students. Our research covers a broad span in micro, macro, econometrics, labour, banking, finance, international and environmental economics as well as a number of interdisciplinary topics. A wide range of methods are employed, both theoretical and empirical. We aim to publish our research in leading economic journals, but also have a strong focus on policy relevance and disseminating our research results to the general public. See the area pages to further explore our research.

Key research areas

• Banking & Finance
• Environmental Economics
• International Trade, Investment & Migration
• Labour Economics & Welfare
• Macroeconomics, Policy & Econometrics
• Interdisciplinary Research

 Milestones in research

• We organized the Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Dynamics (2011), the Spring Meeting of Young Economists (2015), the annual conference of the European Association of Labour Economists (2016), the annual conference of the European Trade Study Group (2021) and the Foundations of Utility and Risk Conference (FUR 2022).
• At the proposal of the department, Ghent University awarded an Honorary Doctorate to Tony Atkinson (Oxford University, 2004), Lans Bovenberg (Tilburg University, 2008) Olivier Blanchard (MIT, 2017) and Lord Nicholas Stern (LSE, 2019).
• Some of our top publications:  Smets and Wouters (American Economic Review, 2007); De Winne and Peersman (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2015); Cockx, Dejemeppe, Launov and Van der Linden (Journal of Labor Economics, 2018); l'Haridon, Vieider, Aycinena, Bandur, Belianin, Cingl, Kothiyal and Martinsson (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2018); Boudt, Cornilly and Verdonck (Journal of Econometrics, 2020).

 Interdisciplinary research centres