Economics at Essex shows its research power

The Department of Economics is celebrating an exceptionally strong performance in the Research excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021), which reveals its strengths across outputs, impact and research environment.

Essex is 4th for economics and econometrics in the UK for research power according to the Times Higher Education, and 8th for grade point average in REF2021.

REF2021 is the system for assessing the quality and impact of research at UK universities and highlights the University of Essex’s impressive growth and increasing impact. Times Higher Education's research power measure looks at REF2021 assessment of research outputs, research impact and research environment alongside the number of staff submitted by each institution for each unit of assessment.

Head of Department Professor Christian Ghiglino said: "I am delighted at our strong performance in this Research Excellence Framework. It is a testament to our strong commitment to research excellence and our collaborative and productive department culture that we have achieved such excellent results. We've been rated 4th for research power and 3rd for the research environment while growing the number of staff submitted from 33 in the last REF in 2014 to 52 for in REF 2021.

"We look forward to building on our substantial base of world-leading researchers as we continue our mission of excellence in economics as a research and education intensive department."

Professor Ghiglino points to the progress the Department has made including the number of submitted staff growing by more than 50%, while maintaining the quality of research.

Essex is 7th in the UK for research outputs with the Grade Point Average for outputs increasing from 3.19 to 3.43 and 43.4% being rated world-leading, up 14.2%. Meanwhile, 30% of research impact was rated world-leading, up 10%.

Essex is also 3rd in the UK for research environment with 100% of its research environment world-leading or internationally excellent.

Researchers at Essex are committed to making an impact through their research from helping reshape regulatory frameworks in the European Union to combatting gender bias in the classroom.