Welcome to the UNH Department of Economics

The Department of Economics has a worldwide reputation for outstanding teaching and research. It is housed inside the Whittemore School of Business and Economics, which has 60+ full-time faculty, including 14 full-time economics faculty members. The department offers a number of undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Our dedication to working with students is second to none. Students have unusual access to the faculty [2], and all faculty members teach undergraduates. Many have received University teaching and/or research awards.

The intellectual life of the department is vibrant, including diverse research interests and considerable joint work across departments and schools. The faculty is known for its scholarship and teaching, and is widely published in leading academic journals. Grants awarded to economics faculty in the last five years total more than $1.5 million and include those from the National Institute of Health, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A weekly economics seminar series [3] allows scholars from around the country and world to join UNH faculty and students to discuss cutting-edge research and policy issues.

About Economics

Economics is a social science that studies how societies can best organize themselves to produce goods and services and distribute those goods and services among its members. It has increasingly been concerned with achieving these ends in ways that are "sustainable," that is, without depleting or destroying the world's natural and human resources.

Economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking, which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions. Robert Heilbroner writes "[The great economists] commanded no armies, sent no men to their deaths, ruled no empire, took little part in history-making decisions….Yet what they did was more decisive for history…, more powerful for good and bad than the edicts of kings and legislatures. It was this: they shaped and swayed men's minds" (Robert Helibroner, The Worldly Philosophers, Simon and Shuster, 7th edition, 1999. p. 13.)

The economics programs at the Whittemore School are designed to teach to students this apparatus of the mind. In the process, students learn about many of the important and pressing issues and problems that face today's societies. They also gain a key set of skills that enables them to think conceptually to understand and solve real-world problems, work with and analyze data, argue logically and cogently, and communicate these arguments both orally and in writing.

No wonder Whittemore School's economics majors are highly sought after by employers of all types, as well as by graduate schools of business and law!!

Undergraduate Economics (both the Bachelor of Arts Degree [4] and the Bachelor of Science Degree [5] are offered) is an excellent background for many careers, including those in banking and financial services, journalism, international business, public service, the diplomatic corps, entrepreneurial ventures, and government. An undergraduate major in economics is also excellent preparation for graduate study in law, business administration, and international relations.

Graduate Economics [6] leads to careers in college teaching (Whittemore School's graduate program in economics is an international leader in preparing its students to teach at the college level), research in public and private agencies, and consulting. Those interested in studying economics at the graduate level should ask their economics professors about the undergraduate coursework that would enable a student to succeed in a top graduate program.