Program Overview

Financial Economics is designed to provide students with an extensive knowledge and understanding of the world of economics and finance. The programme explores core theories in economics and how to apply them to finance and exposes students to advanced quantitative techniques used in industry.

The first two years of the MA in Financial Economics are the same as those of the joint degree. Differentiation occurs in years 3 and 4. Our MA in Financial economics offers focused and specialised training that often cannot be achieved in the joint degree. In particular the programme prescription has been designed in such a way that the positive benefits that economics courses have on finance courses (and vice versa) are maximised. Students will be able to study degree-specific courses, such as the Dissertation in Financial Economics.

Many of the courses can only be taken by a student on the single honours programme and not on the joint degree, offering a level of differentiation.

There will be an opportunity to specialise in the fourth year of study by choosing suggested pathways, which will include “Behavioural and Experimental Finance”, “Financial Investment” and “Macroeconomics, Policy and Finance”.

Our behavioural route, in particular, provides expertise in an area that has increasingly gained prominence in terms of both academic importance (the 2017 Nobel-Prize in Economics was awarded to Prof Richard Thaler – a father of modern Behavioural Economics and Finance) and has repercussions to everyday-life decisions (e.g. the Behavioural Insight Team provides policy advice to the UK government by applying behavioural sciences. Students will benefit from having both close links to employers and exposure to professional training facilities, such as our trading floor, which is used by major financial services companies across the world.

This degree prepares students with the knowledge and skills required for a career in finance and graduates would expect to find employment in all sectors of the financial services industry, both in the UK and overseas, including financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies, pension funds, investment and unit trusts and in roles, such as a financial analyst, portfolio manager or risk management consultant.