About the department
The Department of Economics has been a part of the University of Auckland for almost a century and home to many distinguished New Zealand economists, including AWH “Bill” Phillips, for whom the famous “Phillips curve” characterising the relationship between inflation and unemployment is named.
The department offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in Economics within the Business School, the Faculty of Arts, and the Faculty of Science, allowing students considerable flexibility in taking advantage of our course offerings.
Economics is a foundational discipline for business studies, opening up rewarding career opportunities in the private and public sectors, as well as non-government organisations. Our students have gone on to success at ANZ, the World Bank, the US Federal Reserve, the Reserve Banks of New Zealand and Australia, the New Zealand Treasury, Bain & Company, and Macquarie Bank, amongst many others. And the training we offer can take you to further study at leading universities such as Chicago, Columbia, Oxford and Yale.
Our staff come from around the world, hold doctorates from internationally renowned universities, and have teaching and research interests across a wide range of areas, including behavioural economics, health and wellbeing, environmental economics, industrial organisation, international trade, macroeconomics, and finance. Their scholarship features in leading journals such as Econometrica, American Economic Review, American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Urban Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Review of Financial Studies. Staff are also active in advising economic policymakers in New Zealand and internationally.
As an undergraduate student in the department, you will enjoy research-informed teaching from scholars at the frontier of the subject. And, as a postgraduate student, you will receive rigorous training in economic theory and econometrics to prepare you for a career as a professional economist.
We invite you to consider Economics within your study programme and look forward to helping you achieve your study and career goals.