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Discover more about Economics at Manchester
PhD Economics / Course details
Year of entry: 2025
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Programme description
Our five-year PhD programme consists of:
- Two years of formal training;
- Three years of independent research (with the possibility of a 6th year, for writing up).
The first year of the programme is equivalent to an MSc in Economics and candidates that have already gained a similar qualification at 2:1 level or above, can be considered for entry directly into the second year.
In Year 2, you will take advanced PhD level courses and work on your research proposal, which will represent the basis of the subsequent three years of research.
The programme structure aligns to that of top institutions in the US and the UK, providing you with rigorous advanced training and sufficient time for producing independent research, giving you a competitive edge in the job market.
We admit around 8-10 PGRs per year, and five-year scholarships from the department/school are available. There is also the possibility to compete for ESRC funding.
Find out more on our Economics PhD programme webpages.
Additional programme information
Humanities Doctoral Academy
Our Humanities Doctoral Academy combines the strengths of our four schools to bring expertise, knowledge, support and high-quality services for postgraduate researchers.
We are a community of academic leaders and postgraduate researchers across all levels in the Faculty of Humanities. The Doctoral Academy Hub houses our specialist professional service teams who support postgraduate researchers throughout the programme journey. This includes admissions, registration, student experience, progression, examination, and graduation. We collaborate closely with other University directorates including Manchester Doctoral College, Researcher Development team, and the corresponding Doctoral Academies in the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. Together we provide the best experience and support for your studies and research.
Equality, diversity and inclusion is fundamental to the success of The University of Manchester, and is at the heart of all of our activities.
We know that diversity strengthens our research community, leading to enhanced research creativity, productivity and quality, and societal and economic impact.
We actively encourage applicants from diverse career paths and backgrounds and from all sections of the community, regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation and transgender status.
All appointments are made on merit.
The University of Manchester and our external partners are fully committed to equality, diversity and inclusion.
Teaching and learning
When you become a postgraduate researcher, you'll join a diverse and vibrant community of doctoral students from nearly 100 different countries, all studying within the Faculty of Humanities.
You'll be assigned to a specific research area that complements your research interests and have access to a variety of interdisciplinary research institutes.
Our working environments are often spacious and open-plan, giving you plenty of opportunities to communicate with colleagues and staff within the School. You will have your own desk space as well as access to our fantastic range of libraries on campus.
All of our academic supervisors are research active and will support you to work on challenging research problems and develop rigorous, creative and original research.
You can expect to meet with your supervisor at least once a month to discuss progress on your project.
You will have access to a large and diverse community of internationally recognised academic experts offering an environment that will stimulate intellectual debate and development.
We provide additional financial support for a number of activities related to your PhD, including:
- presenting at international conferences;
- attending workshops that provide relevant professional opportunities;
- conducting fieldwork in the UK and overseas;
- hands-on, paid teaching experience as a Graduate Teaching Assistant.
Graduate Teaching Assistants are valued members of the teaching team. As such, we take pride in the opportunities provided for the professional development of graduate teaching assistants.
Our training includes preparation for application to the Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. This brings a range of benefits:
- consolidates your personal development and emphasises your professional practice in HE;
- entitlement to use post-nominal letters – AFHEA;
- provides a valuable measure of success and is increasingly sought by employers across the education sector as a condition of appointment and promotion;
- recognised and valued by a growing number of international institutions.
See the Associate Fellowship website for more information.
Related research
The Department of Economics is recognised as a leading centre for economics research, and research-led teaching, with particular strengths in economic theory, macroeconomics and econometrics, which support strong applied work in labour economics and environmental economics.
Building on these core areas, recent professorial appointments are leading international research agendas in Financial Economics/Mathematical Finance, game theory with economic applications, and development macroecomics, with the latter's emphasis on poverty-reduction and growth informing the future research direction of the Growth and Business Cycles Research Group, co-directed by George Bratsiotis and Akos Valentinyi. Further information can be found at https://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/gbcr/
Whilst supporting all aspects of intellectual enquiry through high-quality research, our strategy is to underpin this with foundations in the core of the discipline in order to maintain a profile which addresses key economics research questions of the day. To facilitate this, and to provide an academically stimulating environment of discourse and debate research is organised principally through our research areas .
Members of the Economic Studies have had papers published by many leading journals, including: American Economic Review, Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, International Economic Review, European Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, Economic Journal, International Journal of Game Theory, Games and Economic Behaviour, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Econometrics, Econometric Theory, Biometrika, Review of Economics and Statistics, Econometric Reviews, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Labour Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics.
In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) 'Economics' was assessed as part of The University of Manchester's 'Economics and econometrics' submission.
95% of our research was judged to be in the highest two categories (4*) 'world-leading' or (3*) 'internationally excellent'.
Our research impact and environment were also judged to be strong, with 100% judged to be (4*) 'world-leading' or (3*) 'internationally excellent'.
Read more about our Economics research at Manchester.
What our students say
See profiles of current and former PGRs in Economics.
Find out more about what it's like to undertake a postgraduate research degree at Manchester on our Humanities PGR blog .
The University of Manchester Library
Manchester is home to one of the UK's five National Research Libraries - one of the best-resourced academic libraries in the UK and widely recognised as one of the world's greatest research libraries.
Find out more about libraries and study spaces for postgraduate research students at Manchester.
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