Our university professors conduct research in various fields, publish their scientific work and thus contribute to the expansion of knowledge in their specialist area. It is not only the research itself that is important, but also the transfer of knowledge. They are responsible for imparting knowledge and promoting the academic development of their doctoral students.

There are three institutes at the faculty that bundle competencies, in particular to cover interfaces between different areas of expertise and practice.

CINCH (competent in competition and health) is the health economics research center and combines three regional research institutions in the field of health economics. It is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the “Centers of Health Economic Research” funding initiative.

elfe (Essen Laboratory for Experimental Economics) research laboratory aims to analyze the effect of different types of communication on the economic decision-making behavior of virtual market participants.

HEMF (House of Energy Markets and Finance) aims to become the leading research institution in Germany for research at the interface between the energy and financial sectors and combines energy economics and financial mathematics methods in a unique way.

The University Alliance Ruhr's joint competence field for Emprirical Economic Reserach is the answer to current debates on the causes and consequences of social and economic developments as well as on the focus of economic policy, which are increasingly based on the results of empirical research. In the competence field Empirical Economic Research (EWF), approximately one hundred researchers from the three UA Ruhr universities and the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, as well as roughly the same number of PhD students, are currently exploring issues relevant to empirical economic research. The strategic goal of this cooperation is to establish the EWF competence field as an internationally visible center for empirical economic research by bundling excellent research.