Economics

This is a Connected Degree
Portsmouth is the only University in the UK with the flexibility to choose when to do an optional paid placement or self-employed year. Either take a placement in your third year, or finish your studies first and complete a placement in your fourth year. You can decide if and when to take a placement after you've started your course.

Overview
Economics is about more than maths. When you study economics you get a set of tools that allows you to understand how the world works. And when you understand how something works, you can change it.

You'll learn all the core economic theory you need to be an economist using real, topical data from organisations such as HSBC, Barclays, the Bank of England and the UK Government's annual budget. You'll also learn a set of skills that you can use in roles beyond finance.

You'll learn:

• how to use data to communicate a variety of challenging financial, ethical and social issues

• how to present an argument

• how economics influences decision making in a wide range of scenarios, from people's behaviour, to environmental sustainability, to investments and government policy making

After your second year you can apply this knowledge on an optional paid placement. Previous students have worked at places like the Office for National Statistics, Amazon, or the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

Course highlights

• Benefit from expert teaching that's informed by our academics' close relationships with organisations such as the Bank of England and the Office for National Statistics

• Gain a Bloomberg Certificate (a trading platform that's used by 250,000 financial service professionals) in our dedicated Bloomberg Suite

• Be employment-ready by using the same software as professional economists, including Eviews, Datastream and STATA

• Understand how economics affects society through our research expertise in behavioural economics and environmental resource economics

• See economics from a different angle by spending a year abroad at a partner university in the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe or the Far East

• Get support to set up your own business from our Entrepreneurs in Residence Programme

• Learn a foreign language as part of your degree

Accredited by
This course is accredited by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). This means that you won't have to take some of the CIMA exams if you want to be CIMA certified after you graduate. You'll have completed part of your professional qualification by doing this degree.

Careers and opportunities
You'll get ongoing career support – up to 5 years after you graduate.

Get work experience while you study with support to find part-time jobs and volunteering opportunities. Towards the end of your degree and after graduation, you'll get 1-to-1 support from our Graduate Recruitment Consultancy to find your perfect role. On top of this you'll get bespoke careers support through our faculty 'career-ready' programme.

Year 1

Core modules in this year include:

• Introduction to Finance, Accounting and Banking (20 credits)
• Issues in Economics (20 credits)
• Macroeconomics (20 credits)
• Microeconomics (20 credits)
• Statistics for Economics (20 credits)
• The Economist's Toolkit (20 credits)

There are no optional modules in this year.

Year 2 core

Core modules in this year include:

• Econometric Methods (20 credits)
• Intermediate Macroeconomics (20 credits)
• Business Intelligence and Data Visualisation (20 credits)
• Intermediate Microeconomics (20 credits)

Options to choose from in this year currently include:

• Study Abroad 120 Credits (Year Long) (120 credits)
• Behavioural and Experimental Economics (20 credits)
• Business Strategy and Economic Policy for Sustainable Development (20 credits)
• Corporate Financial Management (20 credits)
• Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets (20 credits)
• International Economics (20 credits)
• Investment Analysis (20 credits)
• Managerial and Decision Economics (20 credits)
• Psychology and Altruism in Economics and Finance (20 credits)

Year 3

Core modules in this year include:

• Advanced Economics (20 credits)
• Econometric Analysis (20 credits)

Options to choose from in this year currently include:

• Advanced Corporate Financial Management (20 credits)
• Behavioural Finance and the Psychology of Investment (20 credits)
• Crime, Conflict and Terrorism (20 credits)
• Economics and Finance of Sport (20 credits)
• Economics Consultancy Project (20 credits)
• Economics Research Project (40 credits)
• Energy and Environmental Economics (20 credits)
• Financial Economics (20 credits)
• Financial Investment Project (20 credits)
• Independent Study Project (20 credits)
• International Banking and Financial Instruments (20 credits)
• Market Economics and Business Strategy (20 credits)
• Public Policies and Labour Markets (20 credits)

Placement year (optional)

On this course, you can do an optional work placement year to get valuable experience working in industry. We’ll help you secure a work placement that fits your situation and ambitions. You’ll get mentoring and support throughout the year.

We use the best and most current research and professional practice alongside feedback from our students to make sure course content is relevant to your future career or further studies. Therefore, some course content may change over time to reflect changes in the discipline or industry and some optional modules may not run every year. If a module doesn’t run, we’ll let you know as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative module.

You’ll be assessed through:

analysis of topical case studies
exams
written reports
essays
presentations
self-led independent study project
You’ll be able to test your skills and knowledge informally before you do assessments that count towards your final mark.

You can get feedback on all practice and formal assessments so you can improve in the future.

The way you’re assessed may depend on the modules you select. As a guide, students on this course last year were typically assessed as follows:

Year 1 students: 62% by written exams, 4% by practical exams and 34% by coursework
Year 2 students: 62% by written exams and 38% by coursework
Year 3 students: 33% by written exams, 5% by practical exams and 62% by coursework

Professionally accredited courses provide industry-wide recognition of the quality of your qualification.

• Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
• Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business