Research at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management

Outstanding international research is crucial for SBS-EM. Not only because it develops our understanding of economic and management phenomena—which subsequently enables hands-on research that strives to improve business and public practices—, but also because it feeds back into our classrooms as it encourages our faculty members to infuse valuable new findings and methods into their teaching. A prime example of the latter are our two successful PhD programmes (one in Economics and one in Management) that provide doctoral students with the latest tools enabling them to contribute to the research frontier in their fields of specialisation.

Our faculty has received wide international recognition for it research. Our faculty members include a winner of the Francqui prize (the ‘Belgian Nobel Prize’), a laureate of the Yrjö Jahnsson award, two fellows from the Econometric Society, eight former Francqui chairs, an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and more. Our school has also received numerous competitive grants, including six from the European Research Council.

In addition to these prestigious academic awards, the expertise of our faculty members is also recognised in practice, as evidenced by the many expert positions that our faculty members hold, including, in Belgium, with the Higher Council of Statistics, the Index Commission, Infrabel, and the Belgian Corporate Governance Committee, as well as with the OECD, the European Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, and OXERA in Europe. Our faculty members are also regularly called upon to consult with different companies and public administrations.

Bram DE ROCK 
Vice-Dean Research

Research Centers at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management

Research is a core mission of SBS-EM—and of the Université Libre de Bruxelles—and a key ingredient underlying its vision statement: to become a top institution in Europe. Generating high quality research is important for three main reasons:

1. to develop and improve material and methods used in training and education, as academic programmes rely heavily on advanced and up-to date knowledge;
2. being active in research enables the School to continue absorbing new knowledge generated elsewhere in the world;
3. research contributes to the international visibility of the School, a factor that is particularly relevant for the masters and doctoral programmes. Setting up international partnerships with high quality institutions often requires a visible production of knowledge, demonstrating the School’s focus on research.

Research is fully part of the School’s mission, and a way to have a positive impact on scholarly research, economic policy making, and managerial practices. Academic freedom (deriving from the ‘free inquiry’ principle) and scientific excellence are the key values of the School’s research activities. Academic freedom means that faculty members and other researchers are free to choose their fields, topics, and methods of inquiry. Scientific excellence means publications in the best academic journals, evidence of research impact (e.g. citations), and contributions to international research networks, collaborations, and conferences.

The School’s research has three main distinctive features:

1. it has a strong bottom-up culture, driven by academic freedom,
2. it excels at quantitative techniques, which feed its cutting-edge application of mathematical modelling and empirical research methods, and
3. it is internationally recognised in 7 core areas:

 

• development and microfinance
• finance
• innovation and entrepreneurship
• organisational behaviour and labour markets
• econometrics and statistics
• political economy, trade and EU integration
• applied microeconomics and regulation

The Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management has four research centres:

• CEBRIG: Management sciences, applied economics, and multidisciplinary research; head of the PhD program in management sciences. The CEBRIG is structured around eight research areas: finance, accounting, and taxation; international trade and development; strategy, governance, marketing, and innovation; economic and financial history; human resources, organization, and labor economics; microfinance (CERMi); public management; economic and social studies of the environment (CEESE).
• DULBEA: mainly applied microeconomics, with a decades-long track record of informing and advising national and regional governments through applied research contracts.
• ECARES: economics and statistics, with expertise in 4 core fields: statistics and econometrics, applied microeconomics and regulation, policy, trade and EU integration, and political economy and finance. Also runs the PhD programme in Economics and Statistics).
• TIMES²: innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship, at the intersection of economics and management.

The School is also part of two interfaculty institutes: 

• I³H  - Institute for Interdisciplinary Innovation in Healthcare: New models for innovation collaboration are emerging in the field of healthcare. These are at the heart of research projects and education programmes at the Institute.
• FARI Institute - AI for the Common Good: whose research projects aim to develop, study, and promote the adoption and governance of AI, data, and robotics technologies in a manner that is trustworthy, transparent, open, inclusive, ethical, and responsible.