The UCL Department of Economics selected as the the top department in any field in the UK in REF'14

The Research Excellence Framework 2014 is the scheme for assessing the quality of research in publicly funded UK higher education institutions (HEIs). It follows the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), last conducted in 2008. The results of the 2014 REF evidence the high quality and enhanced international reputation of research conducted in UK HEIs.

According to the grade point average (GPA) on the overall score, the REF 2014 has ranked the Department of Economics at UCL as: having an overall GPA score of 3.78 (out of 4) with 79% of all indicators of output rated at the highest 4* level. The REF 2014 Panel has also rated 69.7% of our “research outputs” in the 4* (world leading) category, 92% of our “impact case studies” were rated 4*, and we scored a perfect 100% of 4* contributions in the “environment” category. This implies that we have top overall score (79/20/1) and top output score (69.7/28.2/2.1) of any department in any discipline in the country. 55 out of 143 pieces submitted for the REF 2014 were identified as “top 5” research papers.

This is an extraordinarily positive outcome which documents the Department’s outstanding quality in Research. It is the fruit of many years hard work aimed at producing a world leading Department excelling in producing frontier-shifting and policy relevant research. We wish to congratulate all members of the UCL Economics community with this outstanding achievement which puts the Department firmly amongst the very most prominent Departments in the UK University Sector.