Awarded by: European Economics Association, Financial Management Association International
The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) was ranked the top university in economics and finance research in Asia-Pacific, according to two independent international studies.
Submitted to the official journal of the European Economics Association, a study conducted between 1995-1999 and entitled "Rankings of Academic Journals and Institutions in Economics" lists 200 universities worldwide according to their research output in 30 of the most important economics journals. Only 22 schools from the Asia-Pacific region made the ranking with HKUST leading the pack (see list 1). Places represented are Australia (6), Japan (6), Hong Kong (3), Korea (3), India, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan (1 each).
On a global basis, HKUST places 37th, surrounded by such major research universities as the University of Southern California (36th), Ohio State University (38th), Cambridge (39th) and Oxford (40th).
Another study on finance research output, forthcoming in the journal titled Financial Management, also names HKUST as the top university in the region. The journal is published by the Financial Management Association International, a global leader in developing and disseminating knowledge about financial decision-making.
Entitled "Production in the Finance Literature, Institutional Reputation, and Labor Mobility in Academia: a Global Perspective", the research paper selected 100 of the world's most productive universities in finance research between 1996 and 2001. By comparing the results in the world's top three finance journals, namely, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies, only three institutions from Asia-Pacific are included (see list 2), HKUST (34th), the University of Auckland (65th) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (89th). HKUST ranks higher than other well-known universities such as the University of Virginia (36th), University of British Columbia (37th), and Washington University at St. Louis (38th).
When the base of comparison is broadened to include the top 16 finance journals, instead of the top three, four universities from the region are included (see list 3). HKUST's position rises to 19th, in the same league as Yale (18th), University of Southern California (20th), Purdue (21st) and UC Berkeley (22nd).