Research Master in Business: Accounting track

The Research Master in Business is a "Top rated program"  in the Dutch Keuzegids Masters ranking 2018

We train our students in applying state-of-the-art research techniques to address research questions that advance contemporaneous accounting research. Our faculty are at the forefront of their research area and work closely together with their students. Our research master and PhD-programs are very well-recognized, which is reflected by the excellent placements of our students.

Learn to conduct independent research at the frontier of the field

The Research Master’s provides a two-year coursework program designed to equip students with all the skills needed to conduct independent research at the frontier of the field.

• Grounded strongly in economics and quantitative methods, our faculty encourages students to explore creative, new ideas in a rigorous way.

• We prefer students to extend the boundaries of the field by incorporating insights from adjacent areas such as finance, management, linguistics, and the behavioral sciences rather than making incremental technical improvements.

• The program is structured in two phases: a two-year Research Master (RM) and a three- to four-year PhD phase.

Achieve remarkable successes

Tilburg was one of the first schools in Europe to offer full-fledged coursework, which prepares students for the demands of dissertation research, on par with what has traditionally been only available in top schools in the US. Since then, the program has achieved remarkable successes:

• Ph.D. students have been placed in top schools in the US (Valeri Nikolaev at University of Chicago, Michal Matejka at USC), in Asia (Huaxiang Yin at Nanyang Technological University), Australia (Chung-Yu Hung at University of Melbourne), and in Europe (Yuping Jia at University of Mannheim, Flora Kuang at Free University of Amsterdam).

• Students have published their dissertation chapters in top journals, such as Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, and the Journal of Accounting and Economics.

• Research master’s students who opted not to continue their Ph.D. in Tilburg have been admitted to Ph.D. programs in University of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 

• Uniquely in the world, three Tilburg Ph.D. students (Michal Matejka, Peter Kroos, and Huaxiang Yin) together with their supervisors have earned the distinguished American Accounting Association’s Dissertation Award (in the Management Accounting Section).

Become an integral part of the Accountancy department

We want our students to share the faculty’s passion for research.

• Students are an integral part of the Accountancy department, benefiting from the many workshops, conferences, and visitors and overall lively, informal but intellectual culture.

• We encourage students to work together with faculty on their research ideas and students have easy access to all the department’s research resources.