History of the Department

Department of Economics was founded in the academic year 1948/49. At that time, the teaching process was centered on the course "National Economy", which was taught by a well-known Slovak economist - prof. JUDr. Rudolf Briška. JUDr. Štefan Heretik, a famous professor of Methodology of Economics, taught the course of History of Economic Thoughts. He was also an author of the first textbook in this field.

An independent Department of Political Economics was established in February 1950. The founding fathers of the Department included following academics: Pavel Rapoš, Julo Horváth, Felix Hutník, Vladimír Witt,  Ľudovít Korček, Vladislav Zbruž, and Ján Přívara. In 1964, The Department of Political Economics was divided into two independent departments, Department of Economic Thoughts and the Department National Economy. In 1970, these departments merged back to the Department of Political Economics and it became the largest department at the Faculty of National Economy in the terms of the number of academics. Library, methodological and education services for staff and students formed an integral part of the Department.

In the 1980s, the number of staff at the Department further increased and their qualification structure improved. Many full-time academics gained doctoral degrees called Candidate of Sciences at that time, or were promoted to professors, or associated professors. The members of the Department were responsible for the university-wide instruction of the course Political Economics and the Department was responsible for the implementation of the study program Political Economics. In December 1989, the Department was renamed the Department of Macroeconomic Theories. The political and economic changes also triggered profound modifications in the curriculum. The Department led by Assoc. Prof. Stanislav Grohmann, PhD. developed a new university-wide course Economic Theory, faculty courses Quantitative Analysis in Economics, Macroeconomics, International Economics and other Economics related courses at all three levels of university instruction. Since September 1991, the Department was renamed the Department of Economic Theory and Economic History and since 2000 it is the Department of Economics. The Department has benefitted from the cooperation with Assoc. prof. Jan Iša, DrSc., who substantially contributed to the development of the Department and teaching curriculum.

Research has belonged to core activities of the Department. The Department has participated in undertaking many theoretical analyses as well as applied research After 1990, the Department has been involved in nationally founded VEGA and KEGA projects, and also international projects such as ESF, TEMPUS, ERASMUS. The Department maintains and develops successful cooperation with international universities, e.g. The University of Antwerp (Belgium), University of Economics in Prague (Czech Republic), School of Business Administration in Karvina of Silesian University in Opava (Czech Republic), University of Marne la Vallée (France), Corvinius University of Budapest (Hungary), Cracow Economic Academy (Poland), University of Granada (Spain), Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, the Complutense University in Madrid (Spain), ICO NIDA, Bangkok  (Thailand) and others. The Department regularly hosts visiting staff and students.

Heads of the Department of Economics to date: