We always welcome new partners to get involved in the Economic Futures programme and encourage organisations looking to support or bolsten their economic capacity to get in touch.

Our full brochure of what we offer is available here. 

There are a number of opportunities to engage with Economic Futures. Below we have highlighted the various opportunities to engage with our work. 

Summer Placement Programme

Established in 2019, the Economic Futures Summer Placement Programme is the biggest and best applied economics placement programme in Scotland. Its unique nature helps to provide an ecosystem for students to gain experience as an applied economist in Scotland and build networks in the industry to aid throughout their career.

We are always looking for organisations with research projects which a student could support (through applied analysis) over the summer. These posts are dedicated research posts with the students working as members of your team to undertake analysis on a topic of your choice. 

During the placement, students are invited to attend two Economic Futures sessions, to meet other students on the programme, to network with other project teams and share outputs from their work. 

The programme in numbers:

1. Year 1 - 75 applications received, and 8 placements provided,
2. Year 2 - 3 placements provided due to Covid
3. Year 3 - 180 applications and 18 placements provided,
4. Year 4 - 150 applications received, and 19 placements provided,
5. Year 5 - 19 placements provided across 9 partners.  
6. Year 6 – 15 placements provided across 11 partners
7. Year 7 - 8 placements provided across 4 partners. 

What we ask of you:

• Provide a suitable project for a students to work on for 6-8 weeks.
• Appoint a representative who would be available to attend interviews.
• Attend an End of Placement reception in August.
• To treat all students as any other employee in your organisation.
• Pay your placements the Economic Futures hourly rate, currently £17.70ph.

What Economic Futures offers you:

• A skilled student applied economist to work on a project for 6 to 8 weeks.
• All advertising and promotion carried out by Economics Futures.
• We will manage the application process and host interviews.
• An opportunity for you to give mentoring/line management opportunities for junior staff.
• A great opportunity to identify future potential employees.
• A table at our 2025 Economic Futures Careers Fair.

You can find our full placement brochure here

Interested in being involved? Email us at economicfutures@strath.ac.uk

Sponsored Dissertation Programme

Our partnership with The Scottish Graduate Programme in Economics (SGPE) means we faciliate on the sponsored dissertation element of the programme. 

The SGPE is a Masters programme run by the 8 oldest Scottish Universities and is based at the University of Edinburgh. Each year the programme welcomes a cohort of highly technical and motivated individuals, providing lessons on key economic theories, principles and policies. 

Our role involves finding partners with topics and supervisors that can help to support individuals over the summer with their dissertation. 

Who is involved? 

Over the past few years, we have had a number of organisations provide topics and supervisors for our sponsored dissertation programme. This includes:

• The Scottish Fiscal Commissions 
• Competition and Markets Authority 
• The Bank of England 
• The Scottish Government
• BP
• The Financial Conduct Authority

The benefits of being involved

• It’s free (apart from the fact that it takes time).
• You get access to cutting edge methods of economic analysis to tackle questions your company might not have the time or resources to answer internally.
• Economics students are highly numerate and statistically savvy, and have the maturity and sophistication to deal with real-world problems.
• You get the best of both worlds – a presentation which explains the methods, motivations and results in easily accessible language and, if you want more detail, you also get the student’s dissertation, which typically contains more rigorous, detailed analysis.
• The scheme is a great way to screen potential employees.
• It’s an opportunity to have dedicated research support to look at a complex issue.
• We have completed a portfolio of past successful projects including work for the World Bank, the Scottish Government, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Bank of England, Scottish Fiscal Commission, Wood MacKenzie, Scottish Fiscal Commission, British Petroleum, the Competition and Markets Authority, Mediacom, WICS, SeaFish and others.

What do we expect from you?

Participation in Sponsored Dissertations Scheme requires no money and relatively little effort. The commissioning organisation is expected to:

• Provide a suitable topic.
• Appoint a contact person who would be available for initial meeting with the student (30 to 60 min) sometime in May with a possibility of a follow up meeting in July to adjust the goals after intermediate results have been obtained.
• Arrange a presentation in August for the final outputs of the research.
• In case the topic requires, provide necessary resources e.g. the data if it is crucial to use specific one for the analysis.

You can find full details on the sponsored dissertation programme here.

Interested in being involved? Email us at economicfutures@strath.ac.uk

Annual Careers Fair 

We run an annual careers fair in October, offering our partners the opportunity to come and speak to undergraduate and postgraduate students across all Scottish universities. Hosted in The University of Strathclyde Business School, the careers fair is one of the highlights of year, offering the opportunity for over 150 students to engage with partners working in economics. 

Attendance is free, and if you are interested in coming to this year's careers fair, please email us at economicfutures@strath.ac.uk