About Us
About Us — Department of Economics
Welcome to the Department of Economics. We are one of the largest departments in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and one of the oldest at the National University of Singapore. Our research spans the major fields of economics, our students major and minor in economics across the university, and we contribute to the public-policy conversation in Singapore through applied research and outreach. Our story begins in 1934. For the long version, see our History page.
The Department today
Economics is taught here by around 70 full-time faculty members, working across microeconomic theory, macroeconomics, econometrics, applied microeconomics, and behavioural and experimental economics. The Department is led by Distinguished Professor John K.-H. Quah, the current Head of Department. We sit within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the College of Humanities and Sciences. Economics is also a main component of two Cross-Disciplinary Degree Programmes: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and Data Science and Economics.
Programmes
The flexible undergraduate system at NUS allows students to take economics as a major or a minor, alongside double-degree pathways with Business Administration, Engineering, Law, Business Analytics, and Information Systems. About 750 to 800 undergraduates currently take economics as their major (including the double-degree tracks), with another 500 to 600 taking it as a second major or minor. At the graduate level, the Department offers the coursework Master of Economics programme, with two tracks: the Applied Economics track and the Quantitative Economics track. The two tracks together admit around 230 students each year. The Department also offers a Master of Social Sciences by research, a smaller research-track master programme. Our doctoral programme admits around 12 students each year and currently enrols around 60. Our graduates take up positions in academia and the public and private sectors across the Asia-Pacific region.
Notable alumni
Many of our graduates have shaped Singapore's public life:
- Goh Keng Swee — among the Department's earliest economics graduates; later Singapore's Minister for Finance and Deputy Prime Minister and widely acknowledged as one of the architects of modern Singapore.
- Lim Kim San, Howe Yoon Chong, and Ngiam Tong Dow — graduates who held senior public-sector positions through Singapore's founding decades, serving variously as cabinet ministers, permanent secretaries, and heads of statutory boards.
- Suppiah Dhanabalan — Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs 1980–1988.
- Goh Chok Tong — Singapore's second Prime Minister, 1990–2004.
- Sim Kee Boon — long-serving Permanent Secretary and Head of the Civil Service from 1979 to 1984.
- Elizabeth Sam — a founding officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore in 1971; later Chair of the Singapore International Monetary Exchange and the first woman appointed to the main board of a Big Four Singapore bank (OCBC, 1996).
- Andrew Lee — Chairman of OCBC Bank from 2023.
- Ravi Menon — Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore from 2011 to 2023; now Singapore's first Ambassador for Climate Action.
- Josephine Teo — Minister for Digital Development and Information.
- Ho Kwon Ping — economics and history graduate; founder and Executive Chairman of the Banyan Group.
Sources
This page draws on the Department's own records, NUS News and the NUS Bulletin, the National Library Board's BiblioAsia and Infopedia archives, and Thomas Silcock's A History of Economics Teaching & Graduates: Raffles College and the University of Malaya in Singapore 1934–1960 (1985). Detailed citations are on the History page.