Quantitative Master of Science (MSQ) with Concentrations in Quantitative Accounting, Quantitative Economics, Quantitative Finance and Quantitative Marketing

Course Overview

The MSQ Program is an integral part of the degree program offerings of the Graduate School of Economics, Finance, and Management (GSEFM). GSEFM constitutes an alliance between Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, and Technische Universität Darmstadt, and offers four Ph.D. Programs (in Accounting, Economics, Finance, and Marketing), as well as the MSQ Program. The courses offered as part of the MSQ Program are the same as those offered for the first two years of the Ph.D. Programs. This allows students to work towards a Ph.D. degree in a program structured following international "best practice", and earn a Master’s (M.Sc.) degree along the way.The MSQ program is designed to ensure that students acquire within a strongly research-oriented setting a thorough knowledge of the relevant concepts and methods of economic theory and quantitative methods, and can apply these to empirical analysis. Upon graduating from the MSQ Program, students will be in a position to identify interesting research questions and address these on their own taking into account the current research frontier. The MSQ Program features four areas of concentration: students in the concentration.Quantitative Accounting specializes in accounting and management;Quantitative Economics specializes in development and international economics, econometrics, macroeconomics, and microeconomics;Quantitative Finance specializes in asset pricing and corporate finance;Quantitative Marketing specializes in marketing.Having completed courses on modern research methodology during their first year of studies, MSQ Program students at the end of their first year of studies through qualifying examinations can become eligible to also enroll from the second year of studies onwards in the GSEFM Ph.D. program that corresponds to their area of concentration. A Ph.D. degree from GSEFM shall enable students to successfully compete with graduates of globally premier Ph.D. programs in being considered for positions in academia or research-oriented positions outside of academia.Students who complete their studies at GSEFM with an M.Sc. degree can qualify for careers in the public or private sector involving challenging quantitative issues. This is facilitated by the fact that second-year courses discuss how to carry out frontier research and that part of the second-year studies is to write a Master’s thesis that involves work on a substantive research question. MSQ program students thus demonstrate the ability they employ and possibly extend quantitative methods that are suitable for the question at hand, adduce valuable theoretical and/or empirical results, and can interpret these results insightfully and understandably.