Adam Smith Business School

Research Quality

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is a bench-marking exercise to measure the quality of research being conducted by universities across the UK. It is an internationally recognised barometer of quality undertaken every seven years.

For the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, the three subjects that make up the University of Adam Smith Glasgow Business School - Accounting & Finance, Economics and Management - submitted separately.

Outcomes from the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 and other quality evaluations:

Accounting & Finance

  • We are ranked 1st in Scotland and 5th in the UK in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
  • 80% of our research was judged to be of international quality with 10% rated as world-leading.
  • We rank 34th in the world and 6th in the UK during the most recent study which looks at the global ranking of accounting departments based on publications in top journals (Chen et al, 2007).
  • We are ranked 7th for the accounting research output, rising to 5th in the more recent period in a recent ranking of 253 European universities in terms of publications in 19 top accounting journals (Chan et al., 2006)

Economics

  • We are ranked 1st in Scotland in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
  • All our research is considered of international quality: 75% is judged to be world-leading and internationally excellent.
  • We are ranked in the top 10% worldwide in the fields of international finance, central banking, European economics, efficiency and productivity, financial development and growth, financial markets, macroeconomics, monetary economics, public economics, and transition economics.
  • We are ranked in the top 25% of institutions worldwide in economics research (RePEc, May 2010).

Management

  • 85% of our research activity was judged by the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 to be of international quality.
  • 10% is rated as world-leading.
  • Only one other Scottish university has a greater percentage of their research in Business and Management with this classification.
  • Overall, the Department ranked 3rd in Scotland for Business and Management. Across the United Kingdom, Glasgow was ranked 3rd among submissions by specialist Management departments (less than 25 staff).