The Princeton University Department of Economics is an

academic department An academic department is a division of a university or school Faculty (division), faculty devoted to a particular academic discipline. In the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries, universities tend to use the t ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, an

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference of eight Private university, private Research university, research universities in the Northeastern United States. It participates in the National Collegia ...

institution located in

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

. The department is renowned as one of the premier programs worldwide for the study of

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

. The university offers undergraduate A.B. degrees, as well as graduate degrees at the Ph.D. level. It is often considered one of the "big five" schools in the field, along with the faculties at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, and

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. According to the 2023-2024 '' U.S. News & World Report'', its graduate department is ranked as the joint No. 4 in the field of economics, in a four-way tie between it, the

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. The department is centered at the Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building & Louis A. Simpson International Building, formerly 20 Washington Road, which also houses the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Bendheim Center for Finance, the Center for Health and Wellbeing, and the

Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance The Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance (JRC) is a research center at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) of Princeton University. Founded in 20 ...

. It is also home to the Industrial Relations Library.

History

Since the university's founding in 1746, many courses in the

social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

, including

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

and politics, were taught in the department of

Jurisprudence Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values ...

and

Political Economy Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...

. Coursework specifically in political economy became available in 1819. When

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...

became a professor in 1890, additional courses were added to the curriculum, including the History of Political Economy. By 1913, the department became independent from history and politics, forming the Department of Economics and Social Institutions.

Academics

The

undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education, usually in a college or university. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, ...

program is one of the most prestigious programs for the study of economics in the country and in the world. Economics is the most popular concentration (Princeton's version of an academic

major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...

) at the undergraduate level. Because the university does not have a business school, the economics concentration attracts many students who are interested in careers in investment banking, management consulting, finance, technology, and more. The curriculum itself is theoretical in nature, requiring students complete quantitative courses up to multivariate calculus. In partnership with the Bendheim Center for Finance, the department also offers an Undergraduate Finance Certificate. The graduate program in economics trains Ph.D. students for careers in

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

, and

industry Industry may refer to: Economics * Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity * Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery * The wider industrial sector ...

. It receives approximately 800 applications for a class of 20 to 25 students who come from over 30 different countries around the world. The program has numerous fields of specialization and has been particularly strong in the areas of Macroeconomics, Industrial Relations, and International Finance. Graduate students who pursue academic careers have historically had placement records at some of the world's leading universities including Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Cornell. The department also oversees a number of centers and initiatives, including: * Bendheim Center for Finance * The Benjamin H. Griswold III, Class of 1933, Center for Economic Policy Studies * The Gregory C. Chow Econometric Research Program * Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance * Center for Health and Wellbeing * William S. Dietrich II Economic Theory Center * Industrial Relations Section * International Economics Section * Office of Population Research * Political Economy Program * Princeton Experimental Laboratory for the Social Sciences (PExL) * Research Program in Development Studies * The Gregory C. and Paula K. Chow Macroeconomic Research Program * Louis A. Simpson Center for the Study of Macroeconomics

Rankings

National Rankings

The 2023-2024 '' U.S. News & World Report'' places its graduate department as No. 4 nationwide in the field of Economics, tied there with the

, and the

. The '' National Research Council's'' rankings place the university at No. 2 in the S-Rank (Scholars Rank) and No. 2 in the Research Rank.

International Rankings

In the 2018 '' Q.S. World University Rankings'', the department places as No. 3 in the world in the fields of Economics and Econometrics. The 2018 ''

Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', often referred to as the THE Rankings, is the annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symon ...

'' ranks the department as No. 7 globally. It has been ranked by

RePEc Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, ...

among the top ten economics Departments in the world.

Notable faculty

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Among the department's past and current faculty members are several recipients of the

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (), commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics(), is an award in the field of economic sciences adminis ...

: Other notably past and present faculty members include: * Alan Krueger former

James Madison James Madison (June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed as the ...

Professor of Political Economy * Mark Aguiar * Orley Ashenfelter * Alan Blinder, the 15th Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve *

Markus Brunnermeier Markus Konrad Brunnermeier (born March 22, 1969) is an economist, who is the Princeton University Department of Economics, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Brunnermeier is a faculty member of Princeton's Princet ...

* Roland Bénabou * Leah Platt Boustan *

* Anne Case * Janet M. Currie * Henry Farber *

John Kenneth Galbraith John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the ...

, a leading academic on

post-Keynesian economics Post-Keynesian economics is a Schools of economic thought, school of economic thought with its origins in ''The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The General Theory'' of John Maynard Keynes, with subsequent development influence ...

; former United States Ambassador to India * Mikhail Golosov * Gene Grossman * Faruk Gül * Kate Ho * Bo E. Honoré *

Nobuhiro Kiyotaki (born June 24, 1955) is a Japanese economist and the Harold H. Helms '20 Professor of Economics and Banking at Princeton University. He is especially known for proposing several models that provide deeper microeconomic foundations for macroecon ...

* Henrik Kleven * Ilyana Kuziemko * Alexandre Mas * Atif Mian * Wolfgang Pesendorfer * Stephen J. Redding * Uwe Reinhardt, a scholar on health care economics and Medicare * Richard Rogerson * Esteban Rossi-Hansberg * Cecilia Rouse, the 30th Chair of the

Council of Economic Advisers The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the president of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical resea ...

* Harold Tafler Shapiro * Mark W. Watson * Wei Xiong * Leeat Yariv * Motohiro Yogo

References

External links

* {{Authority control Princeton University schools, colleges, and departments Universities and colleges established in 1913 University departments in the United States 1913 establishments in New Jersey