Research Program

The Ruhr Graduate School in Economics (RGS Econ) provides research-oriented training to doctoral researchers in a distinguished 3-year Ph.D. programme. It can fund up to eight excellent doctoral students per year with a three-year scholarship. Doctoral students at the RGS Econ are provided with thorough training in advanced methods in economics. They are taken to the frontier of state-of-the-art research in all fields of Economics. Members are integrated into a stimulating research environment composed of three universities and an independent Research Institute, which harbour an ambitious and excellent faculty. Its approach is clearly a disciplinary one as opposed to an interdisciplinary one by trying to cover all major areas of Economics from positive theorizing to empirical validation and policy design as well as evaluation. This focus on economics per se is calculated to facilitate a particular early start of individual research.

Faculty members of the RGS Econ group themselves into three major clusters of interest and research, which are briefly described as the School`s core areas of expertise below.  Interactions and cooperation within and across clusters are intense; doctoral students are invited to contribute to these exchanges by following own interests.


Cluster 1: Applied Microeconometrics, Labour, Population, and Health Economics

This cluster comprises seven faculty members who cover the applied research fields of labour economics, population economics, and health economics. Microeconometric methods are the main tools in these research areas, complemented by microsimulation and computable equilibrium analysis. Part of the research addressed important issues of economic policy.

Examples for research in cluster 1 are projects in the DFG Research Unit (Forschergruppe) 655 on “prioritization in decisions in health services” at the University of Duisburg-Essen and projects in the DFG SPP 4429 (“Schwerpunktprogramm”) at the University of Bochum and the RWI on “Firm Wages and Market Wages”. Further projects on the evaluation of economic policy are conducted in applied policy analysis.


Cluster 2: Macroeconomics, Monetary and International Economics, Financial Markets

Eight RGS faculty members conduct research in areas that are summarized in this cluster. Beyond the fields of research mentioned in the title and the core area of macroeconomic policy analysis, research interests of the members cover related fields like international trade, economic geography, or behavioural macroeconomics. Research within this cluster is mainly based on general equilibrium analysis and in quantitative terms. This cluster is further characterized by a strong focus on applied economic research, where econometric and computational methods are intensively used.

Examples for research in cluster 2 are the projects “Asset Pricing and Macroeconomic Allocations under Aggregate Risk” and “Dynamic Dependence Structures in Risky Asset Returns” within the SFB 823 at the TU Dortmund founded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).


Cluster 3: Microeconomics, Game Theory, Mechanism Design, Public Finance

In this cluster six faculty members of the Ruhr Graduate School combine for coverage of wide areas of theoretical, applied and experimental  Microeconomics, Public Finance and Economic Policy recommendation based on microeconomic modelling. These areas include Industrial Organization, Public Choice, fiscal, environmental and educational economic  policy and pure game theory. Examples of  research topics include the theory of contests and its applications (recent publications in journals like Economic Theory, European Journal of Political Economy, Public Choice), theory of taxation (recent publications in Journal of Public Economics,  European Economic Review, International Tax and Public Finance) and market entry and regulation (recent publications in Games and Economic Behavior, Review of International Economics).