The Faculty of Business and Economics
The Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Basel is the second youngest of the seven faculties at Basel, having been established in 1995. At the faculty’s founding, however, the discipline of economics could look back on almost 150 years of history in Basel.
Becoming an independent faculty in recent years has led to a rapid expansion of course offerings and a significantly reshaped profile. The faculty in Basel is characterized by the aim of integrating the two disciplines of economics and business administration in both research and teaching. Since moving into the Jacob Burckhardt Haus at the beginning of 2009, all departments of the faculty have been united under one roof for the first time.
Economics as the beginning of a history spanning 150 years
The beginnings of economics as a field in Basel were characterized by discontinuities in personnel. The list of professors of economics from 1855 to 1936 includes fourteen names, in addition to several – at times lengthy – vacancies. Situating the field institutionally was also complicated. Attempts to integrate it into the Faculty of Law failed, as did the creation of a separate faculty for political science.
The beginning of the twentieth century marked a phase of stabilization for economics. Stephan Bauer, who was appointed to an extraordinary (associate) professorship in 1899, established a tight network of cooperation based in Basel: while teaching at the university, he also served as the general secretary of the International Association for Legal Labor Protection and led the International Labour Office based in Basel. He was moreover a cofounder of the Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Journal for social and economic history), later called the Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Quarterly journal for social and economic history).
Outside the university, interest in economic questions had increased: Basel’s banks and trading companies called for more robust education in the fields of commercial and financial science. The grand goal of establishing a separate commercial college failed, but a second professorship for economics and statistics was created, financed by the foundation of the Swiss Bank Association (Schweizerischer Bankverein) and filled in 1909 with Julius Landmann. This period also saw the founding of the Swiss Economic Archives in Basel.
This phase of consolidation also indicates the beginnings of the long-lasting close connection between economics and sociology characteristic of Basel. Edgar Salin, appointed to the professorship for economics and statistics in 1927, brought this interplay of both disciplines to a significant zenith over the following three and a half decades.
In 1952, the Basel Center for Economic and Financial Research was founded by Per Jacobsson. At the center, students focused on problems of stabilization policy and primarily worked on developing countries in Africa. The connection between the Basel Center for Economic and Financial Research and the University of Basel has always been close, producing several postdoctoral qualifications (habilitations).
A fundamental change in the profile of Basel’s economic sciences was marked by the appointment of Gottfried Bombach (1957), the first scholar in Basel to represent a form of economics based in mathematics and aligned with Anglo-American developments in the field, thereby strengthening mathematical statistics and business administration
Reforms and transformations
During this period, the university offered no final exam (licentiate) in the field in a modern sense, creating a need for new incentives to guide the era’s next generation of scholars. These organizational “gaps” led to challenging tasks for the discipline of economics in Basel in the following years. On one hand, the growth of the field demanded the establishment of an institute with the necessary facilities for research and writing and an increase in staff. On the other hand, a new examination regulation with a final exam before the doctorate was needed.
Salin was not in favor of the licentiate; he feared it would lead to a dumbing down and make the subject less flexible. Nor did he support the term “institute,” which he deemed more appropriate for the natural sciences or medicine. Nevertheless, after 1960 an agreement was reached to call the unit the Institute for Social Sciences, reflecting its close connection to sociology. This name remained for a quarter-century, even after sociology had long become independent and moved out; the reference to the social sciences was preserved in the unit’s corporate identity until the establishment of the Economic Research Center (see below) in 1988.
This first golden age of economics was then followed by a second wave with national economists René L. Frey (professor of economics from 1970 to 2004), Peter Bernholz (full professor of economics from 1971, specifically economic policy, money, and foreign trade), and Silvio Borner (full professor and dean of the Center for Business and Economics from 1978 to 2009).
The rise of business administration
Business administration appeared at the university only in 1965 with the first chair in enterprise business administration. At the time, teaching focused on three areas: marketing, human resources, and financing. More methodical-technical disciplines such as mathematical decision research (operations research) and accounting, as well as corporate management, were added later.
This first chair in business administration was filled by Wilhelm Hill in 1965, followed in the 1970s by Tobias Studer and Werner Müller. But the real expansion of business administration in Basel did not occur until after the founding of the Economic Research Center (1988). In 1995, Manfred Bruhn officially took over Hill’s chair. To this day, Bruhn leads a chair in marketing and corporate management that is well-known and respected both nationally and internationally.
Successful institutionalization
The Institute of Economics was founded in 1987, merging the Institute for Applied Economic Research and the Institute for Social Sciences. At the same time, plans were made to unite all economic science chairs and their associated facilities under one roof. Since 1988, economics has been housed in the newly built Rosshof as the Economic Research Center (Wirtschaftswissenschaftliches Zentrum, or WWZ). The foundation of an independent Faculty of Business and Economics in 1995 and the move to the new building on Peter Merian-Weg marked the provisional climax and conclusion of institutional consolidation.