Former names | Faculty of Economics and Politics |
|---|---|
| Established | c. 1903 |
| Affiliation | University of Cambridge |
| Chair of Faculty | Leonardo Felli |
| Location | Cambridge , United Kingdom |
| Website | http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk |
The Faculty of Economics is one of the constituent departments of the University of Cambridge. It is composed of five research groups, in macroeconomics, microeconomic theory, economic history, econometrics, and empirical microeconomics. It is located in the Sidgwick Site in Cambridge, has been host to many distinguished economists, and is regarded as the birthplace of macroeconomics. 19 students or members of the faculty have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.[citation needed]
The Faculty of Economics was first created by Alfred Marshall in 1903, although the first notable Cambridge economist is considered to be Thomas Malthus. After Marshall, the faculty was home to Arthur Cecil Pigou, father of public economics, John Hicks, who pioneered the IS-LM model and general equilibrium theory, and John Maynard Keynes, father of modern macroeconomics.[1] The faculty retained a strong Keynesian bend in its thinking well into the late 20th century.[2]
Today, the faculty offers one undergraduate course, the economics tripos, and five graduate programs: an advanced diploma in economics, master of philosophy degrees (MPhil) in economics, economic research, and finance and economics, and a PhD in economics.
The undergraduate course is taught over the course of three years. In Part I, all students take the same five courses: microeconomics, macroeconomics, quantitative methods in economics, social and political aspects of economics, and British economic history. In the later two years, students continue to take courses in macroeconomics and microeconomics with more freedom to choose additional courses, and all students write a dissertation in their third year.