Research priority areas

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is a top-quality research university. To sustain and build on this position, the UvA is now designating 15 fields in which it wishes to actively foster further development.

On 19 June 2008, the FEB established that its two research priority areas would be Behavioural Economics (Amsterdam School of Economics) and Corporate Governance (Amsterdam Business School).

The objective of clearly defining the research areas is to focus and expand existing academic excellence within the faculty regarding these two important fields. Corporate Governance has a broad, multidisciplinary structure and attempts to approach the subject from a variety of perspectives. Behavioural Economics uses funding for field and laboratory experiments to promote research in this field.

About the Research priority areas

Corporate Governance

The subject of corporate governance has become highly relevant both in academic and practical terms, and has broadened to include not only agency-based notions rooted more in finance, but other dimensions that relate to accounting and management as well.

Behavioural Economics

Triggered by empirical results that on a regular basis contradict traditional economic theory with selfish rational agents, economists have started to integrate insights from psychology and sociology into their neo-classical economic models. This has led to a new branch of economics, dubbed Behavioural Economics.