Economics and Finance

Economics and finance address adjacent but distinct questions. Economics is concerned with how individuals, firms, and governments make decisions about scarce resources, and how those decisions produce the patterns of growth, employment, inequality, and crisis that define economic life at the aggregate level. Finance focuses more specifically on how money is raised, allocated, and managed across time and under uncertainty, including the pricing of assets, the structure of financial institutions, and the management of risk.

Together, they form one of the most analytically demanding and practically relevant pairings in the social sciences.

At the University of Bristol, this three-year full-time degree benefits from a department whose research ranks in the top five for economics and econometrics among UK universities. You will engage with the theoretical foundations of economic and financial analysis alongside the empirical and quantitative methods that allow those theories to be tested against real-world data. The programme develops your ability to construct and evaluate economic arguments, to apply statistical and econometric techniques, and to think rigorously about how financial markets and institutions work.

Bristol's research-led teaching means you encounter economics and finance as live intellectual enterprises rather than settled bodies of doctrine. The typical entry tariff is 168 UCAS points.

Graduates of economics and finance programmes are among the most employable in the UK. Investment banking, asset management, financial analysis, economic consultancy, central banking, the civil service, and international organisations are all common destinations, as is management consultancy. The quantitative and analytical skills the degree develops are valued across virtually every sector that deals with data, markets, and resource allocation.

Many graduates also pursue postgraduate study in economics, finance, or econometrics, particularly those interested in research or specialist careers in financial economics or policy analysis.