Blog

WELCOME MESSAGE FROM THE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT

Welcome to the newly designed website for the Department of Economics and Economic History. The Department is one of the largest on the Rhodes University campus and has a staff complement that is a mixture of experience and youthful exuberance. Although the Economics Department is large, by Rhodes University standards, students are allocated a tutor and have weekly or bi-weekly small group tutorial sessions for all undergraduate courses. The website provides information on study options in the Department, staff, research, Department activities and contact details.

In essence, the study of Economics helps to form judgements on the way in which society should use its limited resources to achieve a high and rising standard of living.

The Department of Economics and Economic History allows students the choice of a range of courses at both the undergraduate and Honours levels. These include Money and Banking, Finance Economics, Monetary Economics, Public Finance, Econometrics, International Trade, Development Economics and Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. These career-focused courses will allow the students to become ECONOMIST in a range of cutting-edge occupations.

Economics is a required study for every student in the Commerce Faculty and is recommended as complementary to the Social Sciences. Since Economics touches so many parts of life it may equally be taken together with any of the Sciences, Journalism, Law and many others.

Economics at Rhodes is offered at a number of distinct levels. The first-year course is intended as a broad introduction to the discipline which will give students taking only one year of Economics a sound understanding of basic issues of microeconomics and macroeconomics while laying the foundations on which more advanced study is based. In the second year, students proceed with intermediate-level microeconomics and macroeconomics, after which the third-year and Honours studies allow further specialisation in career-focused disciplines.

The Department offers master’s and doctoral degrees by research thesis.  These options are available to students wishing to pursue a clearly defined field of research.  Acceptance to these degrees depends on the candidate’s previous academic record, an acceptable research proposal and the availability of expertise in the Department to supervise the project. A Master of Commerce degree in Financial Markets is also offered with coursework and a dissertation. This degree is aimed specifically at a specialised career in the financial/banking sector.

Research in the Department has been boosted by the award of the Environmental and Natural Resource Economics Focus Area (ENREFA) by the University.  The motivation behind the focus area is that the Eastern Cape Province has an extremely diverse environment including one of the three globally recognised biodiversity hotspots found in South Africa, viz. the Maputoland-Pondoland-Albany Centre of Endemism.  The intention of ENREFA is to focus primarily on the institutional economic aspects of the research area, wherever possible. Specific topics within the research focus area include environment, ecological and natural resources, agriculture and sustainable development, with a special focus on water management and allocation.