master thesis topics business informatics

• How it works

Useful Links

How much will your dissertation cost?

Have an expert academic write your dissertation paper!

Dissertation Services

Get unlimited topic ideas and a dissertation plan for just £45.00

Order topics and plan

Get 1 free topic in your area of study with aim and justification

Yes I want the free topic

Business Information Technology Dissertation Topics

Published by Owen Ingram at January 4th, 2023 , Revised On August 15, 2023

Information technology stands out as one of the latest discoveries of the twenty-first century. According to researchers, technology is currently undergoing an era of transformation. Yet, despite all the hype, many students struggle to figure out a topic for their degree specifically in Information Technology or combined with business courses as business information technology.

Nonetheless, we are right here to direct our students and show them a ray of hope. A comprehensive list of advanced dissertation topics in the field of business information technology is provided below for our students to pick a topic that suits their interests and research.

• International Development Dissertation Topics
• Cooperate Governance Dissertation Topics
• Business Intelligence Dissertation Topics
• International Business Dissertation Topics
• Business Management Dissertation Topics
• Business Psychology Dissertation Topics
• Business Law Dissertation Topics
• Project Management Dissertation Topics
• Business Dissertation Topics
• HRM Dissertation Topics
• Management Dissertation Topics
• Operations Management Dissertation Topics

Below Are Some Business Information Technology Dissertation Topics:

• A literature analysis on the information quality management framework
• A comprehensive investigation of the information system hierarchy
• Big data and business intelligence are essential for sustainable development in organizations: Discuss a UK-based perspective
• Correlation between Information systems management and risk management infrastructure to achieve business risk resilience
• Impact of the Coronavirus on the management of X country’s information systems
• The function of structured versus unstructured data in managing information systems
• A review of the literature on the management of business intelligence and information systems
• Pre- and post-COVID analysis of the impact of information systems on organizational performance
• Implementing IT governance and managing information systems
• A descriptive overview of IS strategic planning and management services
• A review of the literature on international information system security
• Information systems management historical analysis focusing on the last three decades
• The part that planning, alignment, and leadership play in information systems management
• A systematic review of the post-COVID era for information systems management research
• Difficulties and possible challenges in the International management of Information systems
• A thorough analysis of information policy and global information systems management
• How to handle data management in the era of 5G technologies
• Human-computer interaction’s effect on innovations
• How does machine learning introduce students to more modern career opportunities?
• Consider the use of molecular information systems in biotechnology
• How information technology has aided in the processing of natural language
• What are the most recent advancements in software engineering and programming languages?
• An examination of new potential in the robotics industry.
• What factors should I take into account while buying a bandwidth monitor?
• How do we develop a efficient clinic management system for intensive care?
• Reasons why e-waste management solutions should be used worldwide ASAP
• Motives for why cyberbullying persists in modern communication technologies
• Interpersonal communication has changed as a result of the development of information technology
• The effect of 3D printing on medical practice
• How well do colleges and universities produce qualified computer scientists using robots in infectious disease units?
• How ethical hacking has become more harmful
• Why having specialized financial systems is important
• What is the best security precaution: A fingerprint or a serial number?
• How to strengthen patent protection for technical advances?
• An overview of the many software security measures

Do you have a dissertation topic in the field of business information technology? If not, our competent dissertation writers are at your disposal. The importance of technology research cannot be overstated. Several students are required to complete their information technology dissertations.

Our well-qualified dissertation writer offers research topics in the field of information technology to these students. Such assistance includes writing a dissertation and finding significant and relevant dissertation topics. Place your order now to enjoy our services!

Free Dissertation Topic

Phone Number

Academic Level Select Academic Level Undergraduate Graduate PHD

Academic Subject

Area of Research

Frequently Asked Questions

How to find business information technology dissertation topics.

To find business information technology dissertation topics:

• Examine emerging IT trends.
• Investigate industry challenges.
• Explore digital transformation effects.
• Analyze data security concerns.
• Review AI and automation impacts.
• Select a topic aligning with business and tech intersections.

You May Also Like

Physiotherapy is a healthcare profession that deals with movement disorders of the body arising from different conditions. Physiotherapy focuses on performing practices that reduce physical ailments.

This is a list of dissertation topics related to the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQIA+) individuals.

Need interesting and manageable Facial Recognition dissertation topics? Here are the trending Facial Recognition dissertation titles so you can choose the most suitable one.

USEFUL LINKS

LEARNING RESOURCES

COMPANY DETAILS

• How It Works

Select language

Business Informatics

Thesis project.

This is the starting point for any MBI student about to begin the thesis project. For questions that are not covered here, send an email to the thesis coordinator (Dr. Gerard Wagenaar).

Before starting the thesis project students are strongly advised to first attend the thesis information session meeting, which is offered at the start of each teaching period. See course INFOMTIMBI for more info .

General description

The MBI Thesis Project consists of a 15 ECs project proposal phase (INFOMMBI1) and a 25 ECs thesis phase (INFOMMBI2); additionally 3 ECs are related to the MBI Colloquium . The thesis project takes about 8 months. The set up phase that is necessary to arrange your project is excluded from the ECs count.

The thesis project requires a project idea, a (first & second) thesis supervisor, and a thesis project facilitator. The project facilitator can either be an external organization or Utrecht University. Original ideas from the students are welcome, as long as they are aligned with the research interests and/or proposed projects by the supervisors: see the KonJoin system .

When can a thesis be started? When all courses are successfully completed, with the exception of Dilemmas of the Scientist (FI-MHPSDL1 and FI-MHPSDL2), for which you can do the second workshop (FI-MHPSDL2) during your theses process. A further exception can be given by the thesis coordinator for students with one pending non-mandatory course. Note that you should start looking for a supervisor and a topic before you have finished all your courses (see “Set Up” below).

Previous theses . To get an overview of how an MBI thesis looks like, you can consult previous theses online.

This preliminary step is executed before the official start of Phase 1. The duration largely depends on how quickly a supervisor is found and a topic is agreed upon. This part is excluded from the duration of the thesis project.

1. Find a topic and a (first) supervisor 

You can do an external or an internal (UU) project. The following tips might come in handy when looking for a thesis topic:  

• Konjoin  always has MBI projects.
• Think about the courses you found interesting and ask the lecturers of these courses if they have/know of any projects. 
• Check staff members’ UU or Google Scholar profile. 

Note that any topic has to be agreed with the UU staff member who will act as a first supervisor. Arrange meetings with staff members to discuss possible options, based on their research interests. 

Students can also try to arrange a project that fits within an internship with an external organization. Any project, however, requires a first supervisor from UU who guarantees the scientific quality of the thesis project, so it is advisable to talk to potential supervisors and/or the thesis coordinator before agreeing on an internship.

2. Define your project  

Together with the first supervisor, describe your project's title, problem, aims, and research goals. Come up with a short textual description (about 200 words). Also make clear arrangements with your first supervisor concerning planning, holidays, supervision meetings and so forth. Please make sure you have a clear understanding with your first supervisor regarding deadlines and extra work, holidays, et cetera to be done during the thesis project. Normally, a thesis project runs for 3 periods/terms, but you can set any reasonable deadline in agreement with your supervisor. Please see below what to do when your thesis is delayed and you have to apply for a thesis deadline extension (part 1 and/or part 2). 

3. Ensure adherence to Ethics and Privacy regulations -  Quick Scan 

From Period 2 of 2022-23, all MBI thesis projects require ethics and privacy approval. For projects that do not involve human users and data privacy issues this will be a brief and straightforward process, but you still need to complete an ethics checklist. 

If you are doing your project with a supervisor who already has ethics approval for his/her range of projects, then ask the supervisor if you need to take further action. Otherwise, please inform your supervisor that you need to obtain an ethics and privacy approval. Go to the website that contains the ethics checklist and sample Information sheets and consent forms: https://www.uu.nl/en/research/institute-of-information-and-computing-sciences/ethics-and-privacy . 

First, download the Word form and discuss how to fill it in with your supervisor. Then fill in the Qualtrics form. Please fill in as the moderator email: [email protected] . 

4.   Work placement agreement

If you conduct a project outside UU, the GSNS Work Placement Agreement (WPA) should be filled in, and signed by the student, company supervisor, and the Science Research Project Coordinator. Deviations to the standard contract shall be discussed with the Science Research Project Coordinator. 

You need to fill out and upload your WPA with your Thesis Project application form (see next step) in OSIRIS. 

5. Formalize the thesis request 

Use Osiris student (select 'MyCases', 'Start Case', ‘Research Project GSNS’) to submit your research project application form; if applicable, you will also upload the signed WPA with your application form in OSIRIS. 

Important: in order to apply completely and correctly, you must have discussed the project setup with your intended project supervisor beforehand! We advise you to study the request form previous to discussing it with your supervisor, or fill it out together, to make sure you obtain all of the information required. 

After submitting your application form in OSIRIS, your form will be forwarded to Student Affairs, your 1st and 2nd supervisor, the MBI thesis coordinator, and the Board of Examiners for checks and approvals. You may be asked for modifications, should they find any problems with the form.  

Please note: You cannot register yourself in OSIRIS for the relevant research project courses (INFOMAI1 and INFOMAI2); you will be automatically registered for part 1 of the project upon approval of the Research Project Application Form.

First Phase (15 EC)

The student defines the research method for the thesis, and conducts a scientific survey of the literature in the field of study. The intended learning outcomes are that the student should:

• Be able of designing and developing a research plan, and
• Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the relevant literature.

The proposal contains at least the following elements:

• Title page, which should include at least working title, student name and number, university name, faculty, master’s name, and the names of the first and second supervisor.
• Problem statement: gap in the literature and/or practice
• Research question and subquestions
• Outline of and justification for a chosen research method
• Literature research protocol
• Milestones for the key phases of the project
• A review of the literature that confirms that the gap exists and that the proposed research method is suitable and can lead to interesting scientific insights. The literature review can be performed using any technique spanning from an enumeration of related work at the one extreme, and a systematic literature study at the other.

The work for this phase will not be graded but only marked as "Voldaan" (pass). Phase 1 is finalized with a presentation in the MBI colloquium, which describes the context of the thesis, research questions, envisaged method and artifact(s), and the findings from the literature. The evaluation of the first part should consider the following factors: project's context, research approach and presentation. The first supervisor will handle the grading through Osiris.

Delays. Part 1 should be finalized within 3 months since the beginning of the project. When this part is ranked as not satisfactory, a retake project proposal should be handed in. For details, see the protocol delay at the end of this page.

Second Phase (25 EC)

This phase concerns the actual execution of the research according to the approach defined in Phase 1.The second part is passed when the student thesis is approved by the two supervisors, and a final thesis presentation has been successfully made. The learning outcomes for the student are the following:

• Conduct sound scientific research according to a predefined plan,
• Contribute to the scientific body of knowledge,
• Critically review the research and its plan,
• Give a convincing presentation about the work, and
• Write a scientific report about the conducted research.

The grade of Phase 2 will take into account the following artifacts

• The thesis report
• The final presentation

The grade is calculated using the criteria defined by the graduate school of natural sciences.

As a reference, a grade of 8 or above is expected to meet the standards for a publication in a respectable scientific venue.

Cum-laude graduation . To obtain cum-laude , Phase 2 should obtain a grade of at least 8.5 .

Delays. The student will receive a grade after 8 months since the beginning of the entire project. In special cases, when students have achieved all the ILOs, the graduation can take place before the 8 months. For retake rules, see the delay protocol at the end of this page. For an MBI thesis, the maximum grade for a retake is 8.0.

When approaching the finalization of the thesis and the scientific paper (i.e, when the supervisors think so!), it is time to wrap up the project and graduate.

• Set date for graduation:  both supervisors should agree on the date, including the time. Please be aware that results have to be registered in OSIRIS before the 15th of the month so that the file can be send to the Board of Examiners and the student can graduate that month. If the grades are in after the 15th, the student cannot deregister from Studielink and (s)he has to pay for another month.
• Ask for MBI Colloquium EC: obtain 3 EC for the MBI colloquium by sending a message including your student number to the MBI colloquium coordinators .
• Thesis defense arrangements:  Always agree on the date and time of the defense with your supervisors first. Important: The thesis defense cannot take place  unless the presentation in the colloquium has been given. This means, the student first has to schedule a colloquium date (see Colloquium / Give a talk at the colloquium ). Then, a defense date after the colloquium presentation date can be negotiated with the supervisor. Thus, the defense must be given after the colloquium talk.
• Arrange a  room with beamer or presentation screen: send an e-mail to the department's secretaries . Please make sure to include the time, date, name of the thesis, and supervisor. (Alternatively, the supervisor might be able to reserve a room via the room booking system in a few seconds. In that case, the room should only be reserved on the name of the supervisor, the calendar entry with invitations is created as follows.)
• Enter a calendar entry in MS Teams  to make your defense visible to all colloquium participants.
• During the defense, it is not required to record the names of participants  with an attendance list, because students who want to get an attendance token will send an abstract of the defense talk to the colloquium coordinators.
• Send a copy of your thesis to your supervisors at least one week before the defense.
• Thesis defense:  the student gives a presentation of 25 minutes, followed by a question-and-answer session that typically lasts about 15-20 minutes. A grade will be decided and probably announced afterwards.
• Upload your thesis through ‘Osiris Case’
• Graduation ceremony : an official ceremony, held in the Academiegebouw in Domplein, where the diplomas are handed out. The dates are available here .

Further information

Constraints and faq.

What happens when a student gets an insufficient result after part 2, even after the retake? The student has to start a new project from scratch.

No part-time thesis

The MBI programme is full-time. As such, thesis projects should not be seen as a side project next to a part time job. Professors are entitled to reject a student's request for them to be a supervisor, if the student wants to finish a graduation project next to a job.

The scope of the final thesis project shoud fit the interests of the lecturers from the department. For an overview, either check the websites of the group members, or KonJoin . Note that internships offered by companies do not automatically constitute a thesis topic; an internship without a supervisor is NOT a thesis.

In principle, admission to start the final thesis project officially is permitted when all courses are passed and is confirmed by the (likely) supervisor of the student, after the supervisor has approved the short proposal. Exceptions can be granted when only one course is pending and close to completion; however, expectations are left to the discretion of the MBI programme coordinator.

Doing your thesis outside the Netherlands

It is possible for highly-motivated students who aim at high-quality projects to conduct their thesis outside the Netherlands, either at a company or in a university. Students who intend to spend time abroad are welcome. The same rules on the quality of the project and the availability of a first supervisor apply to projects abroad too. A supervisor may decline to serve as supervisor for a project abroad, whenever (s)he finds the risk of project failure too high. Students doing their thesis abroad are exempted from attending the MBI colloquium.

What is a bad time to apply for an internship?

Summer is a bad time: generally people are on holidays throughout July and August, slowing down the process by a month or two. If interested in starting in September, please contact companies in May or June.

Procedures and forms for research project and internship

Within all Master's programmes one or more research projects are mandatory. Please see ‘Study programme’ for general information on such projects in your curriculum. In many cases, a research project may be carried out outside of the university, in the form of an internship at a company, research institute, or another university. This can be in the Netherlands as well as abroad, with the exception of ADS (see also: ‘ study abroad ’). 

You are required to apply for approval of your research project by submitting a request via OSIRIS Student . Please select ‘My Cases’, ‘Start Case’ and then ‘Research Project GSNS’. Important: in order to apply completely and correctly, you must have discussed the project setup with your intended project supervisor beforehand! We advise you to study the request form previous to discussing it with your supervisor, or fill it out together, to make sure you obtain all of the information required.

After submitting your request, it will be forwarded to your master’s programme coordinator, the board of examiners and student affairs for checks and approvals. After approval of your project it will be automatically registered in OSIRIS. If something needs to be amended, you will be notified by email. Please DO NOT register yourself in OSIRIS for the relevant research project courses. You will be automatically registered upon approval of the Research Application Form.

• Please note that this  protocol   (English version) applies when a project is delayed
• In case of a project or internship outside of Utrecht University, please make sure you fill out the Work Placement Agreement  in OSIRIS Student / my cases . This agreement will be available for filling out in OSIRIS Student/My Cases when you fill out the form for research project approval.

Follow Utrecht University

Utrecht University Heidelberglaan 8 3584 CS Utrecht The Netherlands Tel. +31 (0)30 253 35 50

Business Information Systems and Architecture (BISA) Lab

Master thesis topics, open data use cases.

Over the recent years, more and more data has become openly available on the internet. However, currently this valuable base of information remains largely unused by companies. In order to fill this gap, we develop the Data App Store, an online platform that supports businesses in the discovery, integration and use of open data.

• Conduct a case study on the usage of open data in one of partner companies of the Data App Store project, namely Nestlé, Swisscom, and SBB.

Contact: Andreas Lang  or  Christine Legner

Requirements and Notation for Information Supply Chains

The concept of an information supply chain consists of all activities and work associated with the transformation of raw data to the delivery of information products to the end consumer and involves the participation of several actors. It functions as an analogy to product supply chain. The goal is to understand how data circulates throughout various corporate systems and functions.

• Review existing literature on the topic
• Identify requirements for Information Supply Chains
• Propose a notation scheme
• Otto, B., & Ofner, M. (2010). Towards a Process Reference Model for Information Supply Chain Management. ECIS.
• Sun, S., & Yen, J. (2005). Information Supply Chain: A Unified Framework for Information-Sharing. ISI.

Contact: Clément Labadie  or  Christine Legner

A Data Management Perspective on Information Security Frameworks

Information Security is covered by a variety of general purpose frameworks (relating to governance and auditing, among others). Data management is a subset of these topics that falls under the umbrella of these frameworks, and may be either explicitely or implicitely addressed.

• Identify security-related data management design areas (e.g. access rights, privacy compliance)
• Select and review information security frameworks
• Provide a mapping of data management design areas and information security requirements
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), & United States of America. (2014). Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.
• De Haes, S., Van Grembergen, W., & Debreceny, R. S. (2013). COBIT 5 and enterprise governance of information technology: Building blocks and research opportunities. Journal of Information Systems, 27(1), 307-324.

Approaches for Big Data Management

Big Data is a relatively new technological trend – as such, the way it should be used and manage in corporate environments still needs further definition. Big data management is the organization, administration and governance of large volumes of both structured and unstructured data.

• Review Big Data-related litterature
• Identify design areas and requirements for Big Data Management
• Suggest an approach for Big Data Management in corporate environments
• Chen, J., Chen, Y., Du, X., Li, C., Lu, J., Zhao, S., & Zhou, X. (2013). Big data challenge: a data management perspective. Frontiers of Computer Science, 7, 157-164.
• Cohen, E., Hirama, K., & Rossi, R. (2015). Characterizing Big Data Management.

Analytics as a Service: Self-Service Analytics

Analytical solutions are mainly adopted by large enterprises, however cloud services provide a cost-effective approach to support its adoption by a wider range of organizations. In fact, the global analytics as a service (AaaS) market is expected to grow from $5.9 billion in 2015 to $22.24 billion in 2020  (ResearchandMarkets, 2016) . Besides the reduced costs for implementation, several other factors favor cloud services for business analytics, particularly increased agility owing to the scalability of cloud. 

• Review of literature on cloud analytics to investigate the different features describing AaaS.
• Review case studies on self-service analytics and its adoption in organizations.
• Analyze requirements for self-service analytics for well-targeted offerings
• Baars, H., Kemper, H.-G., 2010. Business intelligence in the cloud? In  PACIS , pp. 145.
• Demirkan, H., Delen, D., 2013. Leveraging the capabilities of service-oriented decision support systems: Putting analytics and big data in cloud. Decis. Support Syst. 55, 412–421.
• Ereth, J. and Baars, H. Cloud-Based Business Intelligence and Analytics Applications – Business Value and Feasibility. In  PACIS 2015 Proceedings . 2015.
• Sun, X., Gao, B., Fan, L., An, W., 2012. A Cost-Effective Approach to Delivering Analytics as a Service, in: 2012 IEEE 19th International Conference on Web Services (ICWS). pp. 512–519.

Contact: Dana Naous  or  Christine Legner

User Preference Models for Cloud Services

  By 2020, “more than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud” (Gartner, 2016) .  Cloud services are mainly delivered in three fundamental service models including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Given the rapid increase of cloud service offerings, users are confronted with multiple options. They find it difficult to evaluate cloud services with the various levels of performance and different economic models. 

• Review of literature on approaches for cloud service selection (SaaS or IaaS).
• Analysis of cloud comparison websites to provide practical insights into the must-have features and appreciated attributes by users for selected types of services.
• Gathering criteria that fit users’ needs respectively functional, non-functional, operational and economic requirements.
• Develop a model or framework combining general criteria for cloud service selection.
• Garg, S.K., Versteeg, S., Buyya, R., 2013. A Framework for Ranking of Cloud Computing Services. Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 29, 1012–1023.
• Koehler, P., Anandasivam, A., Dan, M.A., 2010. Cloud Services from a Consumer Perspective, in: AMCIS 2010 Proceedings. Lima, Peru, p. 329.
•   Ma, D., Kauffman, R.J., 2014. Competition between software-as-a-service vendors. IEEE Trans. Eng. Manag. 61, 717–729.
• Qu, L., Wang, Y., Orgun, M.A., Liu, L., Liu, H., Bouguettaya, A., 2015. CCCloud: Context-Aware and Credible Cloud Service Selection Based on Subjective Assessment and Objective Assessment. IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput. 8, 369–383.

Home > BIT > Masters Theses

Business and Information Technology Masters Theses

Theses from 2023 2023.

SENTIMENT STRENGTH AND TOPIC RECOGNITION IN SENTIMENT ANALYSIS , Esi A.R. Adeborna

Theses from 2022 2022

Smart living with artificial intelligence -- potential impact of artificial intelligence on mental well-being , Weiyu Wang

Theses from 2021 2021

Computer gamification: Addressing symptoms of inattentive ADHD in children , Shavonne Victoria Halterman

Factors affecting COVID-19 pandemic , Linrui Han

Values of trust in AI in autonomous driving vehicles , Ru Lian

A systematic analysis of eye-tracking metrics for sleepiness , Debasis Roy

A meta-analysis: Gamification in education , Yalin Wang

Theses from 2020 2020

Values of artificial intelligence in marketing , Yingrui Xi

Theses from 2019 2019

Predictive modeling of webpage aesthetics , Ang Chen

The impact of artificial intelligence on higher education , Yizhi Ma

Impact of framing and base size of computer security risk information on user behavior , Xinhui Zhan

Theses from 2018 2018

Classification of EEG signals of user states in gaming using machine learning , Chandana Mallapragada

Impact of probable and guaranteed monetary value on cybersecurity behavior of users , Santhosh Kumar Ravindran

Neural correlates of flow, boredom, and anxiety in gaming: An electroencephalogram study , Tejaswini Yelamanchili

Theses from 2017 2017

AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON OF TWO MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES TO INVESTIGATE GENDER DIFFERENCES IN EMOTION CLASSIFICATION , Wangchuchu Zhao Han

Impact of framing and priming on users' behavior in cybersecurity , Kavya Sharma

Sentiment analytics: Lexicons construction and analysis , Bo Yuan

Theses from 2016 2016

Factors influencing the adoption of smart wearable devices , Apurva Adapa

Effect of cooperation on players' immersion and enjoyment , Lakshmi Sushma Daggubati

Using eye-tracking to understand user behavior in deception detection system interaction , Prashanth Kumar Lakkapragada

Understanding user experience in gaming , Sri Chaitanya Sanaboina

Effect of timing and source of online product recommendations: An eye-tracking study , Qing Zeng

Bridging the gap between supply chain and consumer experience , Cui Zou

Theses from 2015 2015

Online diagnosis of diabetes with Twitter data , Farheen Ali

Theses from 2013 2013

Assessment of an enterprise employee portal using dashboard monitoring system: a case study , Aditi Mishra

Shopping alone online vs. co-browsing: a physiological and perceptual comparison , Ceren Topaloglu

Theses from 2012 2012

Under pressure: a psychophysiological analysis of the effect of temporal constraints on information processing and decision making , Nagaratna Krishna Sneha Pochinapeddi

Theses from 2011 2011

Improving student learning outcomes through personal response systems (clickers) , Ran Cai

Comprehensive evaluation of a computer based learning system , Arun Sharma Chintalapati

Assess commercialization feasibility of algae-based bio-fuel with Dashboard and Scorecard technologies , Madhur Chopra

Eyes don't lie: understanding users' first impressions on website design using eye tracking , Sirjana Dahal

Analyzing dashboard performance in educational, non-profit sectors , Rutuja B. Honnatti

Effect of web atmospheric cues on users' emotional responses in ecommerce , Tanvi Joginapelly

Social network analysis of the video bloggers' community in YouTube , Anusha Mogallapu

Applying text timing in corporate spin-off disclosure statement analysis: understanding the main concerns and recommendation of appropriate term weights , Aravindh Sekar

Longitudinal evaluation of a learning system for teaching geographical information system within the context of a geotechnical problem , Aparna Sukhavasi

Theses from 2010 2010

Developing a model for evaluating software tools in education , Vedant Jain

A pilot study in an application of text mining to learning system evaluation , Nitsawan Katerattanakul

Impact of management status, gender, and level of project involvement on corporate governance in a role-based enterprise portal environment , Daniel Augusto Pereira Brás Sequeira

Theses from 2009 2009

The effects of technology on literacy(s) , Thomas Glen Petersen

Integration of a GIS learning system into civil engineering curricula: an evaluation , Basanta Tandon

Comparison of dashboard-based and balanced scorecard-based corporate performance management system , Lin Zhu

Theses from 2007 2007

Toward improving performance measurement in public sector organizations , Matthew Thomas Kutz

An exploratory study of the videoblogger's community , John Warmbrodt

Theses from 2006 2006

A framework of text mining approach for sentiment analysis of news articles using information agents , Balasubramanian Guruswamy

An exploration of collaborative 3D visualization processing in engineering education and supporting tools , Erik Schwartz

A usability and performance analysis of multiple monitor displays and multitasking , Jacob M. Truemper

Theses from 2005 2005

Exploring cooperative learning in an initial computer programming course using Visual Basic , Christopher Duane Brown

Mental models in airborne landmine detection , John William Brown

A conceptual framework of using collaborative filtering algorithms to enhance keyword search , Shreyas S. Deokule

Multi-user search engine (MUSE): supporting collaborative information seeking and retrieval , Rashmi Krishnappa

Social networks: role of personalization and interaction in virtual community for enhancing business , Nisha Maguluru

Collaborative information seeking: A study of a patient care team in the emergency department , Patricia Ruma Spence

Theses from 2004 2004

Iterative usability testing in the development of a learning technology system for teaching geographic information systems within a civil engineering curriculum , John McKenna Sullivan

Learning in affectively intense virtual environments , Lawrence M. Wilfred

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Collections
• Disciplines
• All Authors
• Faculty Authors

Author Corner

Related content.

• Departmental Web Page

Useful Links

• Library Resources

Thesis/Dissertation Locations

• View theses/dissertations on map
• View theses/dissertations in Google Earth

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

business informatics Recently Published Documents

Total documents.

• Latest Documents
• Most Cited Documents
• Contributed Authors
• Related Sources
• Related Keywords

Selected Topics on Business Informatics: Editorial Introduction to Issue 29 of CSIMQ

Assessment under covid-19: exploring undergraduate students’ attitudes towards their online thesis proposal presentations vs. face-to-face.

This study conducted in an EFL setting investigates students’ perception of the thesis proposal presentation in an online format due to safety concerns during the Covid-19 pandemic. Fifty-five students aged 20-22 years old, level B2-C1 in English, in their fourth year of a Business Informatics Bachelor’s programme at HSE University, Moscow, were surveyed regarding their end-of-course assessment experience, which involved a Skype online presentation, rather than the usual face-to-face presentation. Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire consisted of 3 sections and 12 items. A mixed-method approach using quantitative and qualitative data was employed. The findings indicate that emergency transition to the new format did not affect students’ satisfaction or results of the presentation. Overall, students were more than satisfied with the online format, and the results were similar, if not better, than in previous years. To minimise the disadvantages of this format, recommendations for teachers and students were offered. This study might offer new insight on the most appropriate and beneficial oral testing system for students and staff.

Development and Demonstrational Instantiation of a Method for the Structured Content Analysis of Smartphone Apps

The publication discusses the adaptation of dedicated known methods for structured content analysis for the usage of smartphone apps, taking into account the specifics of these dynamic media types and resulting consequences for the procedure and content rating. The background is the increasing popularity of apps and the growing demand for precise analysis of the status quo regarding the content and functions of apps on the market, esp. within design-oriented business informatics. Within the literature, no uniform, comparable and systematic approach to this could be identified so far. Therefore, an existing standard for the evaluation of apps from the medical context has been adapted for general application to apps. This provides a helpful procedure for researchers, practitioners, and students and ensures consistency across studies. The feasibility of the proposed method and assessment standard were confirmed by a successful demonstrational instantiation based on an app review of energy information systems for private customers.

EP.WE.608Hospital within the Hospital – Renaissance of Elective Surgery Amidst the Pandemic

Abstract Aim COVID had an unprecedented effect on the NHS elective surgical care. To overcome the deficit created due to the pandemic, the concept of a ‘COVID protected zone’ gave birth to the ‘hospital within the hospital’. This included 9 elective theatres, 28 ring fenced elective beds, a surgical enhanced care unit, a canteen and a separated entrance. Of the fundamentals of the model were enhanced infection control and PPE guidance for staff. The aim of our study was to evaluate the recovery of elective activity brought about by this elective centre. Methods Theatre activity data was collected weekly (7/20 to 1/21) through the business informatics system. This was used to compare the activity achieved during the recovery phase from COVID after the first and subsequent wave. Results Pre COVID-19, 11 theatres were operating. These managed an average of 263 cases were per week. In the first week of operation of elective centre, 31% of theatre capacity was achieved. By week 7, 106% of pre COVID was recorded and 130% by week 11. During the 2nd wave the capacity was reduced to 42% as opposed to 0% during the first wave. This was only possible due to our model elective centre. Conclusion This model elective centre has enabled elective care to return to above normal levels, with increased efficiencies. This has not only shortened patient waiting times and cleared the back-log but also delivered training to surgical trainees without compromising safety.

1358 Does A COVID Protected Hospital Within A COVID Hospital Enable Elective Care and Training Opportunities?

Abstract Introduction Elective care in the UK came to a standstill with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. A restart could only be enabled with ‘green site’ separation and a ‘covid protected’ zone. A ‘hospital within the hospital’ concept was developed including 9 elective theatres, 28 ring fenced elective beds, a surgical enhanced care unit, a canteen, and a separated entrance. This model was underpinned with PPE, enhanced infection control and guidance for staff. The study documented the ability to recover elective activity and therefore provide a training environment for surgical trainees. Method Data was collected weekly (7/20 to 1/21) through the business informatics system with regard to theatres cases completed compared to the activity achieved in the 11-theatre elective estate pre COVID-19. Results Pre COVID-19, an average of 263 cases were completed per week. In the first week of operation, 31% of theatre capacity was achieved. By week 7, 106% of pre COVID was recorded and 130% by week 11. This was maintained until the impact of the second wave where activity has reduced to 50% but is not anticipated to reduce further as local anaesthetic and blocks maybe utilised. Conclusions This ‘hospital within the hospital’ has enabled elective care to return to above normal levels, with increased efficiencies. This has enabled a rapid return to a training environment for trainees disheartened with deployment to critical care in the first wave.

Assessing students' self-assessment ability in an interdisciplinary domain

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine whether students' self-assessment (SSA) could be used as a significant attribute to predict students' future academic achievement.Design/methodology/approachThe authors address how well students can assess their abilities and study the relationship between this ability and demographic properties and previous study performance. The authors present the study results by measuring the relationship between the SSA across five different topics and comparing them with the students' performance in these topics using short tests. The test has been voluntarily taken by more than 300 students planning to enroll in the School of Business Informatics and Mathematics master's programs at the University of Mannheim.FindingsThe study results reveal which attributes are mostly associated with the accuracy level of SSA in higher education. The authors conclude that SSA, it can be valuable in predicting master's students' academic achievement when taking specific measures when designing the predictive module.Research limitations/implicationsDue to time constraints, the study was restricted only to students applying to master's programs at the Faculty of Business Informatics and Mathematics at the University of Mannheim. This resulted in collecting a limited data set. Also, the scope of this study was restricted to testing the accuracy of SSA and did not test using it as an attribute for predicting students' academic achievement.Originality/valuePredicting students' academic performance in higher education is beneficial from different perspectives. The literature reveals that a considerable amount of work is published to analyze and predict academic performance in higher education. However, most of the published work relies on attributes such as demographics, teachers' assessment, and examination scores for performing their prediction while neglecting the use of other forms of evaluation such as SSA or self-evaluation.

A DIFFERENT TAKE ON TEACHING BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION FOR BUSINESS INFORMATICS STUDENTS: "MASTERING THE BASICS TO STRIVE FOR EXCELLENCE"

Master data management in an iterative approach.

Master Data Management (MDM) is a young area of business informatics that concerns consolidation and centralized control of highly important business data distributed over different information systems. Leading IT companies such as IBM, Oracle, Informatica and others offer a wide range of ready-made products for master data management (MDM products). MDM product deployment involves many technical and organizational complications: it is necessary to adapt these products for the specifics of the business, modify business processes, create new data policies, solve se-curity questions, etc. A popular approach to this task is the iterative strategy of MDM deployment, which supposes a step-by-step implementation of master data management based on the real needs of the business organization. In this paper, the notion of an MDM solution is introduced, which is the result of the deployment of MDM in an organization. It includes a specifically adapted MDM product, new regulations for working with data, trained employees, and an up-and-running process of master data management. The main result of the paper is a functional model of master data management intended for the early stages of the development of an MDM solution within the iterative deployment strategy. The purpose of this model is the representation of real business needs in terms of MDM. It is important to un-derstand which MDM components should be implemented first. The paper describes a detailed description of the mod-el components, as well as a portfolio of six real MDM projects analyzed from the viewpoint of the proposed model.

Implementation of Interdisciplinary Relations on the Example of Professional Training in “Business Informatics” in the Context of a Pandemic

Modeling the economy.

The textbook describes the main sections of the discipline "Modeling of economics", read by students in the master's program in the direction of training 38.04.05 "Business Informatics". The presentation of theoretical information is illustrated by a detailed analysis of specific numerical examples. The textbook contains the tasks of a comprehensive test in the discipline "Modeling of the economy". Meets the requirements of the federal state educational standards of higher education of the latest generation. For students of higher educational institutions studying for a master's degree in the direction of training 38.04.05 "Business Informatics".

Export Citation Format

Share document.

Select language

Business Informatics

Study programme.

Business Informatics (MBI) is a two-year research oriented Master's programme (120 EC). EC stands for European Credits in which 1 EC equals 28 hours of work.

The programme is build around 3 specialized tracks , each focussing on a different area of Business Informatics. At the start of the programme you are encouraged to select 1 track to determine the focus of your programme. The curriculum then consists of a 75 EC course part, followed by a 45 EC research part in year 2. 

Course part (75 EC)

The course part of this programme consists of:   

• 4 compulsory courses (30 EC) 
• 6 elective courses (45 EC) 

In the course list below you can find a description of the specific courses. Please note: students cannot be guaranteed a spot in a certain (elective) course.  Some courses may have limitations on the number of students that can enroll. 

Course overview

Compulsory courses.

• Advanced research methods
• Business process management  
• Data science and society
• Dilemmas of the scientist 1
• Dilemmas of the scientist 2
• Introduction to MBI
• Introducing Natural Sciences
• Method engineering

Elective courses

Primary electives.

These are programme related electives. You must select 3 courses of the following pre-defined list:

• Cloud and edge computing
• Data intensive systems  
• Digital transformation and architecture  
• ICT startups  
• Information visualization
• Knowledge and data engineering  
• Natural language generation  
• Process mining  
• Responsible ICT  
• Requirements engineering  
• Science based entrepreneurship  
• Software architecture   
• Software ecosystems security
• Software production  
• Technologies for learning  
• Theories in information systems  

Secondary electives

These electives can be chosen more liberally to give your programme a personal flavour. You can chose more of the primary electives but you can also chose courses from other programmes like  Computing Science , Game and Media Technology  or Human Computer Interaction . You have room for 3 courses or you can also use this elective space to do a profile (see tab below).  

Profiles (optional)

In order to expand the thematic range of your Master's programme, you can also choose to do a profile in your (elective) course part. A profile is a coherent set of courses of 30 EC on a single theme that is usually not a standard part of the programme. Within this Master's you can choose from the following profiles:

• Communication Profile
• Educational Profile
• Science based Entrepreneurship Profile

Research part (45 EC)

The majority of the 2nd year is spend on conducting a research project and writing your Master’s thesis.  

The research project contains both a scientific and an applied study on a specific business informatics topic. Students regularly collaborate with an external organisation, i.e. a knowledge- or IT-intensive company during the project. The project concludes with writing a thesis and possibly a publishable paper based on your research. Thesis results are presented and discussed during the thesis defense. 

The research part can be started when all courses have been completed.

Within the MBI programme research and education, integrity plays an important role. Ethical aspects of the research (e.g. privacy, hacking, information security, scientific integrity, etc.) are topics in several courses (Advanced Research Methods, Introduction to Business Informatics, Responsible ICT) and an integral part of the research training. In addition, all students of the entire Graduate School of Natural Sciences must participate in the course Dilemmas of the Scientist (0.5 EC), which focuses on integrity and social responsibilities of the scientist.

Educational methods

• Lectures with guest speakers  
• Individual papers  
• Group projects  
• Workshops  
• Virtual business management  
• Business simulation  
• Seminars and masterclasses  
• Excursions and visits  

Examinations

• Individual papers
• Presentations
• Assignments
• Written exams
• Master's thesis

Extra opportunities

Utrecht University offers several programmes for students looking for an extra challenge. These programmes are followed on top of your regular Master’s programme and go beyond the regular curriculum. Do you want to know more about extracurricular opportunities?

Utrecht University Heidelberglaan 8 3584 CS Utrecht The Netherlands Tel. +31 (0)30 253 35 50

Main Content

Business informatics (master of science).

Program: Business Informatics Degree: Master of Science (M.Sc.) Program length: 2 years / 4 semesters (120 ECTS points) Start: winter and summer semester

The application and project-based course of studies in the Business Informatics master program leads to a deepening of practical computer science, scientific computing and business administration teachings.

The courses from the field of scientific computing are primarily offered by instructors with practical experience. Together with a two-semester project thesis integrated into the program, this leads to a high level of practical relevance in the course of study.

Major topics

The master program widens and deepens the competencies in the areas of business informatics, computer science and business administration. The emphasis of these areas is due to individual interests.

In addition to various in-depth modules from computer science and business informatics, such as cloud computing, IT security or process modeling, a large selection of business administration modules from the three major topics of "Accounting and Finance," "Market-Based Corporate Management" or "Innovation and Information" is also available. In addition, there are options to select modules with practical relevance, especially from the field of business informatics.

A master's degree in Business Informatics – a program that specifically trains IT specialists with business administration know-how – qualifies you to work in managing positions in a wide variety of professional fields. Business informatics specialists are found in nearly all fields of the economy:

IT management, software development, IT consulting, banks or logistics are just a few examples of industries in which there are excellent career prospects. A particularly successful master's program furthermore enables access to a doctorate.

Inhalt ausklappen Inhalt einklappen Admission requirements

Inhalt ausklappen inhalt einklappen who can answer questions, technical questions about your application, content-related questions about the program.

Prof. Dr. Elmar Tischhauser Hans-Meerwein-Straße 6 Room 04A29A Phone: +49 6421 - 28 21590 Email: [email protected]

Formal questions about your application

In case of formal questions about the application , please contact Master's Coordination with your application number (if available) at [email protected] .

Inhalt ausklappen Inhalt einklappen Application & Deadline

Application deadlines

Application for a Master's program with a degree from abroad - first semester

Application for a Master's program with a degree from abroad - higher semester

Application for a Master's program with a German degree - first semester

Application for a Master's program with a German degree - higher semester

• More information about the master's degree program in Business Informatics

Preparatory Courses  

Required german skills  .

Orientation

Navigation auf uzh.ch

Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics

Quicklinks und sprachwechsel, main navigation, bachelor's/master's theses.

Part of a Bachelor's or Master's program involves writing a thesis that treats a subject in the student's degree program in a scholarly manner.

Table of contents

Completion time and scope, general procedure, selection of topic and supervisor – business and economics, selection of topic and supervisor – quantitative finance, selection of topic and supervisor – informatics, olat process: registration, collection of project definition, and submission of thesis, alternative process: registration, collection of project definition and submission of thesis.

Registration for graduation

Note on publication requests

The information below applies to all theses.

*Plan the completion of your degree in advance, taking into consideration the published deadlines.

Registration deadlines

There are different procedures for the thesis process, from the issuance of the binding project definition to the timely and formally correct submission. The exact procedure is determined by the supervisor. 

For students of Informatics , the information and documents can be found on the website of the Department of Informatics.

Fact sheet for Bachelor's theses in Informatics   Fact sheet for Master's theses in Informatics

For students of Business and Economics as well as of the Joint Degree Master Program in Quantitative Finance of UZH and ETH, the two possible procedures for the process from registration to submission are presented below.

Business and Economics students may write their thesis with a professor of their choice from the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics at UZH. The individual departments can provide additional assistance when it comes to selecting a topic.

Information from the Department of Banking und Finance   Topics suggested by the Departments of Economics and Business Administration (German only (PDF, 271 KB) )

Students of the joint degree Master's program in Quantitative Finance at UZH and ETH may write their thesis with a professor of their choice from the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics at UZH or the Department of Mathematics at ETH.

Information on the Quantitative Finance program

Informatics students must write their thesis with a professor from their program of study.

List and information for Bachelor's theses in Informatics   List and information for Master's theses in Informatics

After you have found a supervisor the further steps will be done via OLAT. You will receive an e-mail from your supervisor stating that you have been accepted into an OLAT course and that you can start with your thesis. As soon as you have selected the link in the e-mail and have thus joined the course, you will have one day (24 hours) to select your thesis topic.

With your selection, your personal workflow in OLAT will start in which the binding deadline will be recorded and which will always be visible for you. You will also receive an e-mail with the binding deadline. Please note that the deadline has to be met.

The following instructions describe the process and the further steps you have to take now.

Instructions OLAT (PDF, 960 KB)

You must submit your final thesis digitally in OLAT no later than the binding deadline (accessible in your personal workflow in OLAT or in the assignment email at the beginning of the workflow). Theses submitted late are considered to have been failed. Please be aware that the deadline is defined to the minute precisely and this has to be adhered to

Business and Economics or Quantitative Finance students can request their project definition by e-mail to [email protected] . They will also receive their topic and the exact deadline by e-mail. The submission will also be done by e-mail.

Fact sheet for theses using analogue procedure in Business and Economics and in Quantitative Finance (PDF, 87 KB)

The following documents must be attached to the e-mail:

• Proof of matriculation (e.g., student ID card)
• Students in a Bachelor's program: Proof that the assessment level has been passed (transcript of records, module booking printout or online summary of credits on a smartphone, tablet, or laptop)
• Students in a Master's program: Proof of admission to the Master's program for students who have not obtained a Bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics at the University of Zurich (letter of admission incl. any appendix to the letter of admission).
• The completed registration form.

Form for Business and Economics (PDF, 545 KB)   Form for Quantitative Finance (PDF, 545 KB)

The thesis must be submitted by e-mail  no later than the agreed submission deadline (until 23:59) to [email protected]

The thesis may not be placed in the Dean's Office mailbox.

Theses submitted late are considered to have been failed.

In order to register for graduation certain deadlines apply. Please consider the information on the degree conferral dates:

Degree conferral dates

The actual registration for graduation takes place in the app "Study progress & graduation". Please not the procedure on the following website:

After completing their final theses, students repeatedly receive requests from (mainly) German publishers for a publication. Such requests should be treated with caution. Clarify any publication with your supervisor in advance. The supervisor can impose conditions for a publication. Ultimately, however, it is your decision whether you want to publish with a publisher. You should be aware that this is not to be equated with a publication in a scientific journal.

Weiterführende Informationen

Contact Dean's Office

For the submission of documents and for questions of all kinds: E-Mail

Telephone hours for inquiries about the studies (except for questions regarding Master's admission and credit transfer ): +41 44 634 21 24 Mornings: Mon, Thu, Fri 9:30-11:30am Midday: Tue, 10:30am-12:30pm Evenings: Wed, 17:00-18:00pm

Opening hours Dean's Office desk (KOL-G-207): Tuesdays, 14.00-16.00pm

Study Coordination Informatics

Office BIN 2.B.11 Binzmühlestrasse 14 8050 Zurich Office hours

Contacts (sorted alphabetically by students' surnames)

A to J: Bea Girardet, Dekanat E-Mail  

K to O: Donata Mikosch, Dekanat E-Mail  

P to S: Richard Müller-Winter, Dekanat E-Mail  

T to Z: Susanne Erber, Dekanat E-Mail

Information Search in the Central Library

The central library regularly offers courses and workshops on researching academic literature:

• Research workshops (German only)
• Individual research support

If suspicion of plagiarism arises, supervisors will apply PlagScan-in-a-BOX to the thesis to verify if plagiarism is present.

Master's theses that are to be published on ZORA are always checked by means of software beforehand.

• Fact sheet on plagiarism (PDF, 109 KB)
• Scan Software «Turnitin Similarities»
• UZH website

Guidelines for Master Theses / FAQs

The following FAQ will support you in the process of writing your master thesis at our chair. It provides the most relevant information for students that are interested in writing their master thesis at the assistant professorship of management analytics. It should answer all (administrative) questions that might come up before or during the thesis process.

Alternatively, look up this document for a summarized version of all relevant information.

Before you start

What are the eligible programs.

Our chair supervises master students in the Mannheim Master of Management (MMM) and Master of Business Informatics (BI) programs. The programs differ with regards to the timespan of the thesis and the number of credit points (CP):

• MMM: 4 months, 24 CP
• BI: 6 months, 30 CP

These differences will be considered when scoping your topic.

What are the necessary prerequisites?

To write a master thesis at our chair, you must fulfill the following requirements:

• Successful completion of the seminar at the assistant professorship for management analytics (IS 752).  Alternatively , seminar theses from other business or business informatics chairs can be accepted if the topic is relevant for the envisioned master thesis topic. This will be checked on a case-by-case basis.
• Some experience with business process management and/ or process mining (proven, e.g., by successful completion of the course IS 515 Process Management & Analytics).

These prerequisites are necessary, because you need at least some level of experience for writing a master thesis in a technically challenging field like process mining. If you start without any previous experience, you spend too much time learning the basics.

How can I find a topic for my master thesis?

Typically, we do not have thesis topics “in stock” that we can hand out to students. We define each topic individually, such that it matches the research topics of the supervisor and the experience and preferences of the student. Therefore, you should think about concrete topics before you approach us about writing a thesis. Ideally, such topic ideas have emerged while writing your seminar thesis, during the IS 515 course, or in the context of your working student position. Alternatively, you can read recent publications of the chair (or other researchers in the same domain) and see whether those match your interests and offer potentials for a thesis topic. Make sure that your idea is as concrete as possible. 

If you want to read current literature in the BPM domain to find some motivation for a topic, we suggest that you check out the current proceedings of the International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM) or the International Conference on Process Mining (ICPM) or the associated workshops. You can also look at the BPM tracks of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) or the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) . The journals Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE, Springer) or Information Systems (IS, Elsevier) also publish BPM papers.

In the rare case that we do have concrete thesis topics available, you will find them on our website.

How can I apply for writing my master thesis at the chair?

If you fulfil the prerequisites and have found one or multiple ideas for a thesis topic, you can apply for supervision. For applying, please send an e-mail with the following documents:

• Motivation for writing a thesis at our chair (in the body of your e-mail)
• Application documents (CV, Current Transcript of Records)
• PDF of your seminar thesis
• Concrete ideas for a thesis topic (at least half a page, “I want to do something with Management Analytics / Process Mining / Machine Learning” is not a concrete idea)

You should address your e-mail to the employee of the chair who in your opinion has the best fit with the topic (check their websites and publication records for details). If you are not sure, you can alternatively address your e-mail to jpmac mail- mail.uni-mannheim.de .

If we already know you, e.g., because you have written your seminar thesis at our chair, you can skip the application procedure and approach your seminar thesis supervisor about potential thesis topics directly.  

Can I also write my bachelor thesis at the chair?

In principle, we only supervise bachelor theses if you have previous knowledge in process mining / business process management / data mining because otherwise the familiarization with the topic would take too much time. If you have such prior knowledge (e.g. from lectures at the University of Mannheim, lectures during your semester abroad, internships, etc.), please outline it in your application. If you have concrete topic ideas or wishes, please also include them. All other regulations concerning bachelor theses will be explained to you by the supervising person.

Please find more information here .

How can I approach the research proposal?

If an employee of the chair finds your topic sufficiently interesting and has free capacities, you can start working on a detailed proposal of your research topic. This proposal is very important because it sets the objectives and expectations of your thesis. You can expect that your proposal will go through multiple iterations before your supervisors accepts it. Only then you may only officially register your thesis. Working on a proposal is therefore not a commitment for supervising your thesis! There is always a chance (for you and for us) to decide against supervision if we feel that it’s not a good fit for one side.

In the first iteration, research proposal should be about 3–5 pages (net, so text and figures only). It should contain the following:

• Motivation of your topic
• Research questions and research objectives
• Research method
• Preliminary outline
• Seminal literature (at least 20 references)

You should use the official thesis template (available at the chair website or from your supervisor).

Once the research proposal is accepted, it will serve as an orientation throughout your writing process. However, that does not mean that everything in the proposal is set in stone. If during the writing process, you realize that you need to change something, that is always possible (if your supervisor agrees).

How can I officially register my master thesis?

Once your proposal is accepted, you may officially register your thesis. For registering, you need to fill out the official registration form, which your supervisor will send to you. This document needs to be signed by Prof. Rehse and sent to the study office. You can freely choose the official start date and hence the submission deadline of your thesis.

Can I cooperate with a company on my master thesis?

In general, our chair welcomes thesis projects in cooperation with industry. We have a lot of experience in this area and have seen great results come out of those cooperations. However, before starting your thesis project in cooperation with a company, here’s a few things you should consider:

• Topic: We prefer that the company supplies the topic in these cooperative projects. This ensures that the company is sufficiently involved in the successful outcome of the thesis (see also below). However, the topic must also be sufficiently interesting to make a contribution to research (i.e., it may not already be solved in academic literature).
• Company involvement: We find that the most successful cooperation projects are those where the company has a genuine interest in the outcome of the thesis and is involved in the day-to-day business. This ensures a good supervision from their side. One way to show this involvement is, for example, that they offer you a contract as a thesis student (with payment) and name a concrete supervisor for you to work with on a daily basis. If they do not do that, you can still work with them, but you need to consider that supporting you may not be the first priority of the company, which means that you may be left to solve potentially arising problems on your own. 
• Time pressure: When working with a company, you can expect things to go slower than they normally would, because you rely on the input of people that are potentially very busy with other things. You risk coming under time pressure for submitting your thesis on time. When possible, plan for long waiting times, incorporate time buffers, and think about alternative plans.
• Increased expectations: A great cooperation project makes a contribution to both research and practice. This is absolutely possible but may be more challenging than just making a contribution to research.
• Data protection: When you’re working with company data (for example, event logs, interviews, internal documents), you typically need to ensure that this data is sufficiently protected. Think about this topic up front and remember that it does not only involve you but also your supervisor and a potential second reviewer, If the company asks for an NDA, please approach us as early as possible.

If you’re convinced about doing your thesis in cooperation with a company, don’t let these points discourage you! These projects can be great starting points for your career in a company and may be very helpful in the long run.

While you write

Which formalities do i have to consider.

Your thesis should be around 60 pages long. If your topic contains a major implementation, this can be shortened to around 40 pages. Any major deviations from these guidelines need to be approved by your supervisor. These page counts refer to net pages (i.e., pages with text, tables, and figures) and do not include table of contents, lists of tables and figures, appendices, and the bibliography.

Your thesis should be formatted according to the chair template (available on the chair website or from your supervisor). The template is available for Word and LaTeX (on Overleaf).

How can I organize my schedule?

Your thesis project will (roughly) consist of the following phases:

• Exploration phase (research proposal phase): In this phase, you will approach your topic by reading relevant literature, clarify the expectations of your supervisor, and scope your topic. The end product of this phase is the completed and agreed-upon research proposal. Typically, this phase takes about 1–2 months and does not count towards the official timespan of your thesis. However, it is very relevant to get familiar with the literature. After this phase, you can start the actual research work.
• Research phase: In this phase, you will conduct the actual research, following the specifications of goal and method from the research proposal. What exactly you do here, depends on your thesis topic. Depending on the scope of your thesis, this phase takes between 1 and 4 months.
• ( Optional ) Implementation phase: If your topic involves the production of code, such as a data analysis or an implementation of a newly designed algorithm, this happens in this phase. Typically, the implementation phase is closely intertwined with the research phase, but you should treat them differently. Implementations are inherently hard to schedule for, because a lot of unexpected things can happen (e.g., problems with dependencies, bug fixing, provision of computing resources). Therefore, you should plan for plenty of buffer time to not get into trouble.
• Writing phase: Once your research is done, you start writing the thesis document itself. To make this easier, it’s important to document the previous phases really well. This phase typically takes about 1 month.
• Finalization phase: Ideally, the first complete draft of your thesis is done a few weeks before the submission deadline, which leaves plenty of time for finalizing it. In this phase, you correct and finalize the draft, have it proofread, and clarify final small questions before submission.

To manage your thesis project, it is helpful to make a rough schedule before you register.

When and how should I contact my thesis supervisor?

Your supervisor’s task is to guide your research, to help you in case of questions, and (eventually) to grade your work after submission. Your supervisor may be interested in your topic, but that doesn't mean that it’s “their” topic – your thesis is your responsibility, and your supervisor will not do the work for you. This also means that you sometimes need to make your own decisions and justify them.

Our general policy is that you need to be proactive about contacting your supervisor if you need their input. Depending on their availability and preferences, you can either clarify questions via e-mail or schedule a meeting. As a rule of thumb, you should be in touch with your supervisor at least once a month, but no more than twice per month (except for emergencies). If you have many small questions, it’s better to collect them in one larger e-mail or meeting.

How can I deal with confidential data?

If your thesis contains confidential data (for example, if you cooperated with a company), there are two ways to deal with this:

• You can anonymize the company in your thesis, such that a reader will not know what company or other entity the data refers to. This is advisable when you’re working, e.g., with an event log of a common process that exists in any company.
• You can add a so-called clause of confidentiality or blocking notice to your thesis. This blocks the contents of your thesis from any unauthorized readers. This is advisable when you’re working with data that is very specific to the respective company or individual. To do this, you add a page at the beginning of your thesis document, which contains the following text: This master thesis TITLE contains confidential information of COMPANY. This thesis may only be made available to the members of the examination board of the University of Mannheim and must not be published, reproduced, or disclosed to any other third party – neither in full or in part – for a period of DURATION years after completion of the thesis examination process without explicit prior written approval by COMPANY.

Which way you choose depends on the circumstances of your thesis. It is important that you clarify any data protection concerns early in your thesis project such that they don’t cause problems after the fact. Note that your thesis must always be available to the examiners, i.e., your supervisor, Prof. Rehse, and a potential second reviewer. 

Can I use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for writing my master thesis?

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are great tools to support you in your writing process. However, they should be used with care. The most important thing to consider is that you are 100% responsible for the contents of your thesis, whether you wrote them from scratch, used writing tips from tools like Grammarly, or if you used ChatGPT for certain parts. It is crucial that you recognize that ChatGPT does not actually understand the answers that it provides, can reply with unwarranted confidence, may provide non-existing references, and does not know the rest of your thesis, e.g., which terminology you have defined.

Therefore, you should only use this technology for tasks for which you can (and will) verify the correctness of the output. This means that with respect to your thesis, you should primarily use it as a tool for writing support, not to come up with argumentation and other actual content. For example, you can use ChatGPT to get quick suggestions on how to turn a set of bullet points into a nicely flowing paragraph, or how to improve the textual flow of an initial paragraph you drafted. Do not blindly copy the given answer but pick and choose the parts of its answer that you like, while also making sure that the meaning and terminology of the final paragraph remain correct. You can find additional information in the booklet ChatGPT im Studium (available in German only).

IMPORTANT: Make sure that you only use generative AI tools in such a way that it does not violate plagiarism and other rules of the University of Mannheim.

When you are done

What are my options for a final check.

You have the option to send a preliminary version of your final submission to your supervisor for feedback. They will not read every word of your manuscript, but they can give you high-level feedback on the content and structure and point out obvious flaws if there are any.

How can I submit my master thesis?

You need to submit your thesis in two ways:

• Electronic submission: On the date of your submission date (or earlier), submit the thesis via e-mail to your supervisor. This e-mail should contain your finalized thesis document as well as all additional data that is part of your submission (e.g., analysis results, implementations, etc.) as one ZIP file. If the data is too large to be submitted via e-mail, you can alternatively provide a github link or something comparable, where we can download the data.
• Printed submission: In addition, you need to submit two printed copies of your thesis. We prefer your printed copies to be A4, softcover, with an adhesive binding in black. You can submit the printed versions either in person at our office (please make an appointment with your supervisor to make sure someone is there) or via mail. Our mail address is Universität Mannheim zu Händen: Jana-Rebecca Rehse, Juniorprofessur für Management Analytics 68131 Mannheim

If you send the thesis via mail, it does not need to arrive here on the date of the submission deadline. Only the submission of the electronic version counts.

Make sure that your electronic and your printed submission are identical. Both should contain the required affidavit as specified in the Prüfungsordnung.

How can I get a certificate of passing?

Once you have submitted your thesis, we will automatically issue a submission confirmation and send it to the study office. In addition, we can issue a certificate of passing, which confirms that your thesis will be graded with at least a 4.0. If you need such a certificate, approach your supervisor.

Do I have to present my master thesis? Will it be published?

In addition to supervision, you are expected to participate in the chair's thesis colloquium. The aim of the colloquium is to promote the exchange between students and to strengthen your presentation skills and feedback competences. To this end, you are expected to present your work at least once. A good time to do this is around the middle of your editing period, when you already have a good idea of your topic but can still incorporate feedback. Participation in the colloquium is mandatory during the editing period, even if you do not present. The colloquium usually takes place on the second last Thursday of the month. An invitation is sent separately to the respective students as soon as they officially registered for writing their theses. 

Master theses are not published. However, very good theses can be turned into a research paper at a conference or in a journal. If this is the case for your thesis, your supervisor will let you know. You will have the chance to work on turning your thesis into a publication and of course will be listed as an author of this publication.

What are the grading criteria for my master thesis?

Your thesis will be graded based on the following criteria:

• Structure and outline: Your topic is well-motivated and contextualized in existing research. The research problem at hand is well-described and specified by means of concrete research questions. Your thesis is structured adequately.
• Foundations: The scientific foundations of your thesis are relevant and complete.
• Use of literature: The used scientific literature is relevant and complete. The differences between existing literature and your contribution are shown.
• Content / method: The chosen research method is well-executed. The research results address the research problem and solve it in an adequate way.
• Evaluation: The research results are evaluated appropriately.
• Discussion: Scientific and practical potentials and limitations are discussed.
• Citations: Citations are adequately used and formatted correctly.
• Linguistic & formal presentation: The language of your thesis is adequate, precise, and understandable. The thesis is free from grammatical, syntactical, or orthographical errors. The thesis is formatted uniformly according to the template.

For any additional questions, please contact your supervisor or the chair at jpmac mail- uni-mannheim.de .

Good luck on your thesis!

Tracking cookies are currently allowed.

Tracking cookies are currently not allowed.

Topics for master theses

The Department of Business and Management Science can offer the following Master Theses topics:

• Department of Business and Management Science
• Master's thesis

Investments, Insurance and Household Finance

Insurance (life insurance or non-life insurance).

Insurance topics can be divided into life insurance and non-life insurance. They address different kinds of risks. There are several types of products considered as life insurance:  payments to the policyholder's beneficiaries in the event of death, income to individuals unable to work due to a disability, pensions, etc. Non-life insurance is designed to protect against other types of risks, such as property damage or liability.

We can discuss your specific interests concerning insurance. For example, a possible thesis topic can be an analysis of a particular insurance product or methodology of insurance premium computation.

Supervisor: Roman Kozlov .

What determines donations to charitable causes in Norway?

Charitable donations by individuals are an important source of funding for social services and public goods. This study aims at identifying important factors that determine when and how people donate using detailed information on the Norwegian deposit lottery (pantelotteri) in which people are able to donate deposits they would receive for recycling bottles and cans. For example, how did individuals respond to insecurity during Covid-19? Do news of natural disasters affect donations? How long-lasting are these effects?

Supervisor: Maximilian Todtenhaupt .

Data på individnivå fra Statistisk sentralbyrå

Tjenesten microdata.no gir tilgang til variabler på individnivå om befolkning, utdanning, sysselsetting, inntekt, formue, gjeld, skatt, trygd, barnevern, valg og boforhold. Jeg har ikke et bestemt spørsmål i tankene, men veileder gjerne oppgaver som bruker disse dataene. Studenter som ønsker å gjøre dette kan få tilgang til microdata.no gjennom NHH. Bakgrunn fra et kurs i økonometri er sterkt å anbefale.

Supervisor: Øyvind Thomassen .

The black swans of climate risk: Compound events

Extreme weather events such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, and storms cause major economic losses to private and public sector alike. The latest IPCC report shows that the frequency, and to some extent the magnitude, of such events will continue to increase although there are exceptions. The probability of so-called ‘compound events’ – that two or more extreme events happen simultaneously or successively – will increase due to this ongoing trend.

Such events carry even more extreme economic losses and play a crucial role in evaluating climate risk, but they are not well constrained nor understood. In 2018, there was elevated risk for snow-driven flooding in central Norway, which was followed by one of the warmest and driest summers on record, which coincided with several climatically induced forest fires. Based on both historical data and climate predictions, the students will evaluate the probability and potential economic consequences of compound events today and in the future and provide insights and advice for the insurance industry. The industry partner for this thesis is Tryg.

Supervisor: Geir Drage Berentsen .

Inequality and the inheritance tax in Norway

Prior research argues that the inheritance tax is an important instrument to reduce inequality. In Norway, the inheritance tax was abolished in 2014. How did this effect income and wealth inequality in various parts of Norway? The aim of this thesis is to investigate these questions using micro-level data from Statistics Norway (SSB).

Did companies misuse government support during Covid-19?

Government support to firms during the Covid-19 pandemic was comprehensive and supposed to quickly reach businesses. This may have lead to some firms exploiting government funds that were not eligible. For example, some companies may have been reconstructed to utilize the support schemes and then initiate bankruptcies in parts of companies. It may also be of interest to look at risk factors that arise in companies that receive payments from several support schemes. This study will contribute to an evaluation of how well the grant schemes have worked.

Corporate solvency and government support during Covid-19

The lock-down of Norway on March 12, 2020 meant that many businesses had problems paying taxes and fees. In order to alleviate the burdens and avoid bankruptcies, the government, with effect from 12 June 2020, issued a regulatory provision that allows for deferral of payment for most tax and duty claims. This has led to a halving of bankruptcies compared with 2019 and raises several interesting, empirical questions: Have schemes led to companies being kept alive that would normally have gone bankrupt? How can the tax administration predict bankruptcy among firms?

Topics on mutual funds

I can provide data on equity mutual funds that can be used and extended with additional data to examine different research questions. Experience with programming in R/Stata/Python or similar is useful.

Supervisor: Andreas Ørpetveit .

Real investments

Analyze a given investment project, either accepted or planned, in order to show its value creation by calculating the related net present value (or using a different profitability measure). This problem is thus a parallel to company valuation, however, the time horizon will typically be shorter and including option characteristics may be more relevant. Besides, strategic and financial issues will be more prominent than accounting issues in this thesis.

Supervisor: Øystein Gjerde .

The Dynamics of Conflict through the Lens of Financial Markets

In a series of influential studies, scholars have identified that companies benefit from conflict. Arms companies are involved in smuggling, diamond mining companies exploit the chaos to secure extraction rights and corrupt officials disclose top secret information. Every conflict is different and firms will find a way to profit from the chaos.

Possible questions are: do these findings still hold in recent times, from for e.g. 2005 to 2020? Are the perpetrators different? Can we link perpetrators through their board composition? How connected are the boards of companies that violate embargoes? How does corporate governance influence illegal activities? 

Starting point: DellaVigna, S. and La Ferrara, E., 2010. Detecting illegal arms trade. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , 2(4), pp. 26-57.

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman .

Consumer behavior and insurance

Supervisor: Aysil Emirmahmutoglu .

Performance evaluation for mutual funds

Supervisor: Trond M. Døskeland .

Identifying financial behavioral biases for households

Risk management.

Analyze a given company or a given line of business exposed to price risk from commodities/services sold or bought. May also be combined with currency risk. What is the level of risk, how do we measure it, which instruments are available to deal with this risk and how successful is the risk-reducing strategy, using these instruments. Hedging strategies are based on a combination of risk-reduction and expected values, so both components may be included in the analyses.

Supervisor: Øystein Gjerde .

Topics on Shipping economics and finance

We have comprehensive data on micro-level commodity trades, vessel behaviors, satellite-based information, in addition to the commodity and freight market data.  By addressing practical challenges faced by shipping companies, theses can be developed based on hands-on projects in collabration with shipping companies, banks or insurance companies. The following aspects serve as broad examples:

Topic 1: Trade flow and freight rate forecasting

Topic 2: Investment horizon. How to balance asset lifespan, carbon neutral regulation and investment costs.

Topic 3: Carbon costs in transportation

Topic 4: ESG disclosure in shipping & offshore industry

Topic 5: Climate change and credit risk in shipping & offshore

Supervisor: Haiying Jia

Topics on Marine Insurance

Topic 1: Marine accident analysis w.r.t. attributes such as trade, location, or crew

Topic 2: Automated underwriting in marine insurance

Topic 3: Risk exposure vs. financial return

Analysis of high-frequency supply data for oil tankers

Using unique daily spatial data for vessel employment, analyze how regional freight rate changes are driven by supply and demand, and whether the specifications and operator of a ship matters for its attractiveness in the market.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia .

Dividend taxation, abusive stock swap and loan transactions

A tax strategy among investors is to recast a dividend payment as a swap payment in order to take advantage of favoured tax treatment given to swap agreements involving non-US persons in the US. US stock dividents paid to non-US persons are subject to the dividend tax, whereas “dividend equivalents” paid to non-US persons as part of a swap agreement are not subject to any US tax.

Since a 2009 Senate hearing identified the tax evasion nature of these transactions, there has been little research on the topic. These transactions are likely the origin from which cum fraud schemes have arisen. Since 2009 the US has had reforms in their dividend tax and in the legislation surrounding the claiming of these dividend equivalents. What is the impact of these reforms on stock lending of US stocks?

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman  and Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman

Dividend taxation, Cum-Cum Trading and Ex-Dividend Pricing

A common tax planning strategy among investors is to sell their stocks the day before dividends are due, and buy them back on the ex-dividend day. This strategy, known as cum-cum trading, allows investors to avoid paying dividend taxes. The Norwegian tax authorities are considering to implement policies that make cum-cum trading less attractive in order to generate more dividend tax revenue.

Your task will be to see how cum-cum trading relates to taxation and other policy variables, using international stock market data. Questions that you could answer in this topic are: Do stock market experience excess trade around the dividend day? Does excess trade relate to the dividend tax rate? Do stock prices reflect the level of the dividend tax? Are policies aimed at combating cum-cum trading effective in other countries?

Cum-cum trading strategies have been detected in Europe. Are they present in the Asian and South-American market? Are these trades a global problem that contributes to rising inequality?

Business Taxation

Agricultural policy, the environment and the price of necessities in norway.

It is well known that the price of necessities, especially food products in Norway is higher than in neighboring countries. An important determinant of the price of necessities consists in tariff barriers. Tariffs in Norway are among the highest in the developed world. Norway charges particularly high tariffs on meat and dairy products, but also substantial tariffs on fruit and vegetables. In neo-classical models of trade such tariffs generate a negative shock to consumer surplus that exceeds the gain in producer surplus. Moreover, in the recent context tariffs have become increasingly controversial because they contribute to already rising prices in supermarkets.

A recent paper by Shapiro (2021) also highlights the environmental impact of tariffs. On the one hand, Norwegian tariffs displace agricultural production from abroad to Norway. This is good for the environment if production in Norway is cleaner than abroad and vice versa. On the other hand, tariffs affect the relative price of clean (low emissions per unit of produced good) to dirty (high emissions) goods. Shapiro (2021) finds that tariffs, on average, increase the price of clean goods more than the price of dirty goods. That is, tariffs act as an implicit subsidy on pollution.

In this topic you can think of the following research questions:

• What is the benefit of the current tariffs to the Norwegian agricultural sector and how do they compare to the cost incurred by consumers?
• What is the environmental impact of Norwegian tariffs? Is Shapiro’s conclusion that tariffs, worldwide, harm the environment also valid for Norway’s tariffs? If so, how can Norway introduce greener tariffs?
• Anything else relating to tariffs that comes to mind.

Joseph S Shapiro, The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy, The Quarterly Journal of Economics , Volume 136, Issue 2, May 2021, Pages 831–886, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa042

Floris Zoutman

Energy Subsidies in Europe: a cross-country analysis

Mainly, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine energy prices across Europe have increased tremendously. The price of natural gas, which prior to the invasion ranged between 50-100 euro per MWh peaked to more than 300 euro per MWh in September of 2022. Prices of other forms of energy, particularly electricity, have seen a corresponding incline. At the same time the consumption of electricity has dropped significantly. Between August 2022 and January 2023 European demand for natural gas dropped by 19.3 percent. This decline challenges the traditional view that the demand for energy is inelastic. At the same time, there is confounding variation in the form of changes in weather which hinder the possibility to estimate the causal relationship between the price of energy and the demand of energy.

In this thesis you will aim to estimate the price elasticity of energy using variation in energy policy. While all European countries faced similar increases in the price of energy, the policy response between countries differed substantially. In some countries, government offered little in the form of direct subsidies on energy. Other countries, like Norway, offered generous subsidies effectively shielding consumers from most of the price increase. If the demand for energy is elastic, we should see that higher subsidies result in more energy consumption. On the other hand, of the demand for energy is inelastic there will be no relation between the two variables.

Data on energy policies and energy/electricity consumption for several European countries.

Regression modes

Solving the Replication Crisis

Recently there are many calls to create a practice of replicating empirical research. In this topic students can choose one of more than 4000 published papers with data packages and attempt to replicate the tables and figures in the paper. While replicating a paper, the students would learn a given method of analysis. The individual contribution of students would be to implement an additional analysis such as machine learning with the purpose of corroborating the results or answering an additional question on the base of the data.

Website: https://replication.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Airbnb in Norway & electricity prices

The risk of accepting Airbnb guests is that they might run up all of your utilities. Are renters sensitive to this concern? Estimate the relationship between listings and electricity prices.

Scrape the Data from http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data/ and determine whether Airbnb listings in the last 2 years respond to electricity prices.

Bank disclosures and corporate governance

Since 2015 European banks must disclose their operations in tax havens. These operations involve activities like complicated tax arbitrage strategies. While technically legal, tax arbitrage may be morally questionable and sometimes courts make rulings turning some tax arbitrage strategies illegal. How does the involvement of banks in tax havens correlate to their corporate governance? What is the relationship between a bank’s ethical credo and the ethicality of the bank’s behavior?

Starting point: https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/opening-the-vaults-the-use-of-tax-havens-by-europes-biggest-banks-620234/ .

Leak data and nationality

A recent article identified a set of 30 last names of individuals involved in mafia activities in Italy. Are these names mentioned in the Panama papers, Pandora papers or other leaks? What are the activities of the involved firms? Are these mentions consistent with money laundering.

Taxing foreign investors: an empirical analysis of recent reforms of the dividend withholding tax system

Foreign individual and institutional investors are a fundamental component of global capital markets. On the one side, attracting foreign portfolio equity investments is a key policy objective for many countries around the world given the related benefits. On the other side, they pose serious challenges from a tax collection perspective. Traditionally, countries around the world rely on withholding tax to ensure the proper collection of taxes on foreign investors. Yet, existing withholding tax systems are far from being ideal and reforming them is high on the political agenda in Norway and within the European Union. Recently Finland launched a new innovative system called TRACE to make the collection of such taxes easier. Norway has also a similar system since few years now. 

The master thesis should provide an overview of the two systems, compare them and analyses whether the introduction of such systems increased investment in those countries and/or affected dividend payment policy of domestic companies.

Supervisor:  Elisa Casi-Eberhard .

Digital residency program: a policy to boost the economy or a high-tech route for suspect funds?

In 2021, Palau launched its digital residency program, which offers foreigners a digital identity to access to all services within Palau’s emerging digital economy. However, Palau is not the first country to offer such a program. In 2014, Estonia was the first country to establish a digital residency program. It primarily targeted businesses that could start a EU based company and run it from anywhere, fully online.

For example, a foreign entrepreneur would be able to use his/her digital signature to conclude contracts throughout the European Union entirely remotely. So far, it has been a success with more than 50,000 applications as of 2019. Yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that the Estonian digital residency program has also been vulnerable to money laundering risks. What is the economic effect of such programs? Do they improve the business environment of a country or do they offer a high-tech route for suspect funds?

Supervisor: Elisa Casi  and Mohammed Mardan .

Inventors and tax havens

Inventors are an important source of innovation for any country. At the same time they are highly mobile and respond to tax incentives. Furthermore, the intellectual property they create (e.g. patents) can be used shift income to tax havens. How many inventors are involved in such tax avoidance behavior? This project will assess the importance of inventors in tax havens by combining data on international inventors with the Panama papers which have recently become available.

The Tax Haven Call

In political and institutional economy we think of countries as having extractive and inclusive institutions. Institutions are loosely defined as informal norms of behaviour. In an influential (but controversial) paper by Acemoglu et al. (2001) the type of institutions are shown to impact economic development. However, it is unclear whether what aspect of these informal norms have influenced countries like the Netherlands, Ireland and Bermuda to become tax havens?

Dharmapala and Hines (2009) have found that governance is an important factor that separates tax havens from non-tax havens. Better-governed small countries are more likely to be successful tax havens than badly governed small countries. Governance and institutions are closely related, but the link is not explored in this article.

In addition, the list of tax havens has expanded since 2009 and now we have continuous measures of secrecy and tax haven status, which can give better identification in re-examining the question: What makes a tax haven?

Starting point: Dharmapala, D. and Hines Jr, J.R., 2009. Which countries become tax havens?. Journal of Public Economics, 93(9-10), pp.1058-1068.

Wealth Taxation in Norway

The wealth tax is one of the most controversial aspects of the Norwegian tax system. Detractors believe that the wealth tax hurts economic growth by disincentivizing entrepreneurial activity and risk taking, and taking away a source of liquidity for business owners. Proponents argue that the wealth tax is a great instrument to reduce inequality.

In this project you will use data on Norwegian tax payers to evaluate the arguments of the detractors. Specifically, the goal is to understand i.) whether the arguments are valid empirically, ii.) how large the concerns are quantitatively. Specific research questions could be i.) does the wealth tax discourage individuals/business owners from taking risk, ii.) does the wealth tax reduce liquidity for small businesses, iii.) does the wealth tax reduce innovation or iv). does the wealth tax discourage savings. The answer of each of these four questions is of great practical relevance to policy makers that have to make a trade-off between the efficiency cost and the equity gain associated with the wealth tax.

Data: Individual tax return data

Literature:

• Berzins, Janis, Øyvind Bøhren and Bodan Stacesu (2019). Illiquid Shareholders and real firm effects: the personal wealth tax and financial constraints. Working Paper BI.
• Akcigit, U., Grigsby, J., Nicholas, T., & Stantcheva, S. (2018). Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century. NBER Working Paper.

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman

Using Textual Analysis to identify whether there is a gender gap in financial white collar crime

There is very little systematic evidence on the gender gap in crime. In particular, it is difficult to quantify it for financial white collar crime, as they do not find their way into police statistics and as there is little female presence on the top levels of companies.

In this project, we can use textual analysis tools to collect data from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on insider trading and other frauds. We can match the name of the defendant to a gender, and quantify what is the difference between males and females.

Then, we can correlate the gap, as well as the fraud itself, to past financial statements of involved companies in terms of gender representation in the board of the company and other indicators of company culture. Finally, we can compare the gap to other measures of female participation in the boardroom and determine whether white collar females seem more or less likely to commit crimes than white collar males. We can provide a partial answer to the question: Are companies going to become more responsible (do less criminal rule-breaking) if there are more females on the board?

Methods: Textual analysis, web crawling, R

Detecting Corruption in the Oil-For-Food Program

The Oil for Food Program (OFFP) was a relief effort orchestrated by the United Nations to help the people of Iraq after the Gulf War. It lasted from 1995 to 2003. Leaks from classified reports reveal that there has been rampant corruption, from the bank that handled the Iraq escrow account, to the trucking company that was supposed to handle the logistics of food transport. Even the then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan has been implicated in this corruption scandal. By looking at important events that influence the survival of the OFFP and stock prices of companies bidding for contracts, by virtue of insider trading, we can find an indirect proof for corruption.

The methodology for this thesis is the same as in DellaVigna, S. and La Ferrara, E., 2010. Detecting illegal arms trade. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2(4), pp.26-57.

COVID-19 and lockdown measures: understanding the mechanisms

During the COVID-19 pandemic most countries imposed Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) or lockdown measures in an effort to halt the spread of the disease. In a case study focusing on the Scandinavian countries we show that in Scandinavia the NPIs introduced by Norway and Denmark were extraordinarily effective in reducing the pressure on the health care system and mortality (Juranek and Zoutman 2020). In this thesis we want you to pick apart the mechanisms. Which NPIs are most effective in reducing the spread of the disease? When should countries introduce NPIs (traditional epidemiology suggests that early NPIs will be much more effective than the same NPIs introduced at later stages)? What is the relationship between mobility on the one hand, and the spread of COVID-19 on the other hand? All of these questions remain mostly unanswered and are of extreme importance to policy makers trying to stop a second (or third) COVID-19 wave, or trying to fight a new infectious disease in the future.

Data: the EU has created a database which contains an overview of all NPIs passed in EEA countries. The database also contains records on hospitalizations, which for many reasons is the most valuable measure in tracking the spread of the disease. Google has publicly available data on mobility. For Scandinavian countries we can also track data at the regional level.

Methods: the methods depend on the background and training of the student undertaking the thesis. Many meaningful relationship can be estimated through linear regression. However, it is also possible to use more advanced methods such as machine learning or epidemiological models.

Reference: Juranek, Steffen and Floris Zoutman (2020). “The Effect of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on the Demand for Health Care and Mortality: Evidence on COVID-19 in Scandinavia” SSRN Working Paper.

COVID-19 and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: A cost-benefit analysis

All countries in developed countries have introduced Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing, handwashing, mask wearing and school closures, in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. The charge has up to now been lead almost exclusively by epidemiologists. In most countries economists are not included in the team of experts that advice the government on these decisions. That’s a pity, because economics, and especially, old-fashioned cost-benefit analysis has a lot to offer under these conditions. Roughly speaking NPIs all have their economic costs and benefits (i.e. their ability to halt the spread of COVID-19). From a cost-benefit standpoint it is possible to sort NPIs from “cheap” (high benefits, low costs) to “expensive” (low costs, high benefits). In case of a pandemic the objective of the government should be to keep the pandemic suppressed at the lowest possible cost. This means that we should pass NPIs in order from cheap to expensive. In particular, the most expensive measures should only be introduced in case cheaper methods do not suffice.

To give a practical example, handwashing is cheap in the sense that it has very little economic costs and is most likely quite effective at stopping the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing is relatively more costly as it comes with high economic costs (think for instance about spacing people out in classrooms, public transport etc.), and is probably not much more effective than handwashing. This does not imply that we should not practice social distancing, but it does imply that handwashing comes “first”.

In this thesis, you will do two things. First, you explain in more detail the principles of cost-benefit analysis applied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, you provide your best guestimates of the costs and benefits of NPIs passed in Norway using, for instance, academic literature, media sources and interviews with experts. Third, you apply your cost-benefit analysis with the guestimates to provide clear policy advice to Norwegian policy makers on which measures should come first.

Methods: cost-benefit analysis, literature review, interviews with experts

COVID-19 and the Labor Market: Understanding the Mechanisms

Juranek et al (2020) study the labor market in the Nordic countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the pandemic has had disastrous consequences in terms of both unemployed and furloughed workers in all four countries. Sweden, comparatively does the best, and Norway is at the bottom (at least in the short run). Part of the difference in labor market outcomes is driven by differences in lockdown measures, which Sweden (in)famously abstained from, but there are also differences in labor market policies. Moreover, the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic itself may have a direct effect on labor markets. In this project, you will try to unpack the mechanisms focusing on data from the Nordic countries. As a first pass, you will extend the data of Juranek et al (2020) and replicate their analysis over a longer time frame. Afterwards, you will build a statistical model that disentangles the mechanisms between COVID-19 and the labor market using causal diagrams, regression analysis and/or machine learning tools. The results will be helpful in understanding how the pandemic affected labor markets, and guide policy makers in passing measures that fight the pandemic but minimize the damage to the labor market. Data: Labor market data from the Nordic countries available from the various statistical agencies, data on mobility available from Google and data on the spread of the pandemic, available from health institutes. Methods: Linear Regression, causal diagrams, machine learnings (the choice of methods can be adjusted based on the student’s background).

References: Juranek, Steffen, Jörg Paetzold, Hannes Winner and Floris Zoutman (2020) “Labor Market Effects of COVID-19 in Sweden and its Neighbors: Evidence from Novel Administrative Data” SSRN Working Paper

How do schools adapt to their physical infrastructure?

Does it matter for teaching practice whether the school is new, old, well maintained, run down, a permanent building or temporary modules ("barracks")?

Supervisor: Arnt-Ove Hopland

Data Science and Analytics

Use high frequency satellite data to estimate economic and environmental outcomes of energy production processes.

ESA’s Earth Online portal offers European research institutes direct and simple access to Earth Observation data coming from satellite missions operated directly by the European Space Agency and Third Party Missions. These data can be combined with ghgsat estimates to answer the following question: "How much carbon dioxide equivalent was released during the mining/extraction of a particular mine/oil & gas field?"

Supervisor: Giacomo Benini .

Gender gap in acting and sensitivity to sudden reputation changes

The value of a good reputation has changed in recent years. A simple internet search can show that no one can maintain a good reputation. This is especially relevant in jobs that are close to the public eye. Consider Johnny Depp who lost on a considerable income after he was dropped by movie studios during his divorce proceedings. The research question is: How much of the gender pay gap of film stars is due to reputation?

Scrape data from https://www.qscores.com/performer , and determine what is the price of a good reputation.

Social and economic networks

Networks are important in shaping behavior in many environments. For example, economic production and supply chains are organized as networks, new technologies diffuse in the economy through research and development collaboration networks. Social networks pervade our social and economic lives. They play a central role in the transmission of information about job opportunities and are critical to the trade of many goods and services. The presence of networks makes it important to understand which network structures can emerge and how networks impact behavior.

We can discuss your specific interests concerning with analysis of network models or/and analysis of real life networks. For example, a possible thesis topic can be online networks, networks in science and education (e.g. collaboration, co-authorship networks, citation networks), financial networks (e.g. influence of networks on financial decisions), trade networks, networks in labor markets.

Detailing the Value of Climate- and Environmental Surveillance on Sea food production

What’s the cost-benefit for using an integrated climate and environment surveillance on seafood production? The student will assess the impact and values associated with using a detailed monitoring tool called Clarify, which currently is employed by many seafood producers. The student will be given access to unpublished data afforded by Clarify that can be directly compared to other chains of the seafood production, including feeding, fish welfare, loss to sickness and slaughter. Additional climate data can also be made available to the student depending on emerging needs. This Master opens for a relevant exploration of how monitoring can strengthen seafood sustainability and resilience to the changing climate conditions that remain the key premise for seafood production. The industry partner for this thesis is Clarify.

Optimal placement and impact of offshore wind parks

In this thesis, the students will use historical weather data to investigate the potential of Norwegian wind power in a scenario where all the current offshore locations suggested by the NVE are in full production. Alternative locations derived from optimizing production output are available and can be compared to the sites suggested by NVE. A secondary goal is to use the results to investigate the impact on the European energy market. The industry partner for this thesis is Statkraft.

What are the optimal sites for future seafood production?

Wind conditions, sea currents, -temperature and -salinity are all important factors when considering new locations for ocean-based aquaculture facilities. Moreover, locations that are considered optimal today may not be suitable locations in the future due to climate change. In this thesis, the students will investigate the current optimal placements of aquaculture based on detailed historical data. By considering state of the art climate predictions, it can be investigated how these placements will change on different time horizons. The students should also discuss placement conflicts with fisheries and coastal shipping routes. The industry partner for this thesis is Clarify.

Economic impacts of climate change

Many social and economic activities are heavily affected by weather variables such as temperatures and precipitation. In this master thesis, the students will explore the relationship between weather variables and economic decisions made by Norwegian households and/or businesses. In addition, the students will explore how climate change, through its effect on temperatures and precipitation, will affect these economic decisions into the future.

Examples of relationships to explore are the effects of heatwaves on human mortality rates, extreme precipitation on agricultural production, or drought on hydropower production. The exploration can be either on the macro or micro level and can be in the form of either a statistical analysis or modelling exercise. For the prediction exercise, the students will have access to novel climate forecasts from the Climate Futures project. An interesting question to explore is how access to improved seasonal weather forecasts can mitigate the harmful economic impacts of climate change.

Investigating patterns in procurement data

Public procurement involves a large amount of money and involves a wide range of sectors. In Norway public procurement was almost 600 million NOK in the 2019 statistics and the public bought everything: from toilet paper and office supplies to new roads, high-tech hospital supplies and defense material. Data on official tenders (possibilities for contracting with the public sector) are announced on doffin.no and there is a special complaint committee dealing with disputes related to public contracts. This offers a rich amount of data to explore topics within public procurement.

For instance, sometimes a public entity can pretend to be looking for a contractor in a competitive manner, however the phrasing of the contract allows the entity to choose preferentially a predetermined contractor. This step can be part of a larger corruption kick-back scheme that is well-hidden beneath a veil of legality. There could also be differences in how public procurement in various dimensions (geographical, type of public entity, etc.). This topic allows students to investigate procurement tenders and complaints on decisions made to determine whether there is evidence of specific patterns or preferential treatment.

Necessary skills: web scraping, textual analysis, statistical/econometric analysis

Supervisors: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman and Malin Arve .

Textual analysis of topics in the facilities management literature

Using machine learning techniques to study the evolvement of the facilities management literature.

Supervisor: Arnt Ove Hopland .

Textual analysis of topics in the public choice literature

Using machine learning techniques to study the evolvement of the public choice literature.

Textual analysis of topics in the operations research literature

Using machine learning techniques to study the evolvement of the operations research literature.

Does climate change affect the probability distributions of weather at sea?

Using large amounts of global hindcasting data for weather variables, to investigate the spatial and temporal changes in the probability distributions for certain key drivers (e.g. wave height, wind speed) for chosen main trade routes in ocean transportation. The objective is to provide further insight in, for instance, seasonal and spatial patterns. Also to develop an algorithm that can match a vessel track in space and time with interpolated weather variables observable only at certain spatial nodes.

Supervisor: Professor Roar Ådland

Port operations and weather impact

Using empirical hindcast and forecast data for precipitation in selected South American ports, to assess and predict the impact of rain events and intensity on the loading of weather sensitive cargoes such as paper, grain etc.

Work in co-operation with shipping companies Western Bulk and/or G2Ocean.

Correcting witness reports through Machine Learning

It is well known that witness accounts on crime are often unreliable. The effects of stress or poor light on the victim can create a skewed perception of how the perpetrator looked. This, coupled with an unconscious discriminatory bias, leads to the victim reporting that the perpetrator was unknown or from the black racial minority. Often the witness report is based on an estimate – e.g. “ the perpetrator looked black, around 25 years”.

Comparing actual arrests to reports, we can try to put a number on the amount of witness error. By training a machine learning model on a subsample, we can try to predict the gender, race and age of unobserved criminals. This can impact the computation of statistics on black/white, male/female and young/old crime gaps. What if blacks are actually responsible for a very small fraction of crimes? What if females are responsible for more crimes? This could lead us to rethink current racial profiling strategies in crime detection.

Data: National Incident Based Reporting System, US

Starting point: Imbens, G.W. and Lemieux, T., 2008. Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice. Journal of econometrics, 142(2), pp.615-635. Fryer Jr, R.G., 2016. An empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force (No. w22399). National Bureau of Economic Research

Nonlinear econometrics

A large portion of empirical research within economics and finance is based on linear models, of which the linear regression is by far the most prominent. Is this because we live in a linear world, or at least an approximately linear world, or is it the case that we implicitly close our eyes to important features i our data by not considering nonlinear methods on equal footing as traditional ones?

Questions like this may take your master project in several directions, such as (listed from least to most statistical/mathematical maturity recommended to complete the project, all of them benefit from programming skills):

1. To what degree is linear regression the main vehicle for measuring marginal effects of explanatory variables X to a response variable Y within economic research (within a certain field/ in Norway/ at NHH or otherwise suitably limited)? Why do researchers choose this method (convenience/interpretability of coefficients/easy presentation/theoretical foundations/...)?  Then, figure out to which degree such concerns can be addressed by a corresponding nonlinear model. A nice touch would be to re-do a recent linear study nonlinearly and see if there indeed are effects that were missed.

2. A bit more technical version of the point above is to write a thesis that revolves around the systematical development of a tool in your programming language of choice (such as R or Python) that implements as many needs as possible of the linearly oriented researcher in a nonlinear framework, with pre-work consisting of providing a theoretical foundation, and as post-work perhaps testing your «product» by trying to «sell it» to an experienced researcher.

3. Financial time series are typically nonlinear in the sense that the correlation coefficient does not, in general, give good descriptions of dependencies across time and space. This has naturally lead to the development of nonlinear methods to model financial processes. For example, the classical theory for portfolio allocation that Harry Markowitz introduced in the 1950s balances expected return (as measured by means) and risk (as measured by standard deviations and correlations) in order to provide the optimal distribution of wealth across different assets.

The Markowitz portfolio theory is very simple and easy to implement. But, it explicitly assumes that dependence between assets is linear, so the decades following its introduction have seen many attempts to improve the Markowitz method by modelling dependencies nonlinearly. Many authors note, however, that it is actually quite hard to attain higher returns using modern methods compared to the classical approach. This project may contain a survey of modern portfolio selection methods (which will require the ability to read fairly technical research papers), and a discussion part where we try to answer the question whether beating the classical approach indeed is «hard», and if so, why?

Supervisor: Håkon Otneim .

Energy Markets, Resource Management and Sustainability

Master thesis in cooperation with fjord miljø as in nordfjordeid.

Some highlights of the company:

• Developer of equipment to the fish farming industry
• Our mission is to provide equipment to protect fish from lice infection
• Our products are for example protection shields, upwelling system, filtration of surface water and monitoring environmental conditions by the use of sensors
• We are constantly seeking new developments to improve our solutions
• We are also in a progress of making new partners to have the option to supply complementary products which will supplement our existing products
• Main office is located in Nordfjordeid
• Contact person: Arild Heggland

Some aspects that could be the foundation of a master thesis:

• Market knowledge of Fjord Miljø and our products
• Market rating of Fjord Miljø
• How to improve knowledge and rating?
• Estimate willingness to pay for protection against lice infection
• Valuation of our products
• How do fish farmers consider new products to be useful in the future, these products will be specified later
• Where do fish farmers expect the industry to move on, landbased, closed containers in sea, continue as their producing today?
• Other relevant topics.

Supervisor: Stein Ivar Steinshamn .

Finance as resource allocation: Does ESG build real assets?

This study complements the many that have asked whether ESG (environment, sustainability and governance) is associated with higher or lower return on investment: Finance also creates real assets. Is there evidence, in our time, that preferences or policies, regulation, raises resource flows and asset creation (builds windmills, for instance).

Supervisor: Gunnar S. Eskeland .

The potential in renewable power

Contact Eskeland for Study design, as many approaches are on the table. One is the role of taxes (incl the new 'grunnrenteskatt'), another is new concessions and the role and shape of auctions, including contracts of difference; a third is offshore installations and how they are placed in terms of access to markets, etc.

Political Economy and Social Perspectives on the Climate Transition

NHH works with technically oriented partners (industry, ntnu, ife) on scenarios for the transition to a low-carbon economy. This thesis will combine such scenarios for the transition with perspectives from political economy (as with: who pays, and industry interests, and rich vs poor) and social acceptance.

Electric vehicles and de-carbonizing transportation

This topic is in collaboration with ENOVA.

Norway has pledged to reach almost net zero emissions by 2050. The transport sector is responsible for almost one-third of the emissions in Norway, and the use of passenger cars alone is responsible for almost 10%. Therefore, to reach net zero, it is vital to de-carbonize the Norwegian car fleet. A key strategy to reduce emissions from the transport sector is to induce households to replace their fossil fuel cars with electric vehicles. Although most of the new cars sold in Norway are electric, the national fleet of cars still contains 'only' electric vehicles 20%. Will all cars in the future eventually be electric? Or are there barriers preventing the switch to electric vehicles?

In this topic, students will explore the sources of emissions from the Norwegian car fleet and how these emissions can be reduced. The thesis will focus on two main issues:

1. Emissions from the car fleet in Norway: Emissions from the transport sector have been steadily falling. But the car fleet is projected to increase in the coming years, and the share of transport with car is also increasing.

a) What are the drivers of emissions? For example, number of miles driven per car, age of the cars, geographical distribution, etc.

b) How will these emissions evolve over time?

2. Switching from fossil fuel cars to electric vehicles: Purchasing and driving electric vehicles have been heavily subsidized by the government. But people are still driving fossil fuel cars.

a) What are the barriers to replacing your fossil fuel car with an electric vehicle? For example, economic, behavioral, social, etc.

b) How can we induce households to make the switch to electric?

This topic can be approached from many different angles and is suitable for a wide range of empirical methods.

Supervisor: Isabel Hovdahl .

Electric vehicles in Norway: Emission reductions versus lost tax tax revenue

An analysis of electrical vehicles in  Norway where reduced emissions are measured against  reduced tax revenue.

A number of topics in collaboration with the Maritime Cleantech cluster administration

• What branding effect will the use of green/emission-free logistics chains have for the fish farming industry?
• What is the willingness to pay on the part of cargo owners for the use of low- and zero-emission vessels in their logistics operations?
• Economic valuation of Maritime Cleantech as a cluster organisation.
• Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels - how big a role can the production and distribution of these play for Norwegian value creation in 2050?
• Joint Norwegian investment for the maritime industry: how to position ourselves for increased exports of green technology? (Strategic/Marketing)
• Analysis of the market for green maritime technology in Southern Europe (can be built on research done by Innovation Norway in France, Spain and Italy)
• Size, scope and framework of incentive schemes for contracts for difference.
• Are end consumers willing to pay for green (maritime) transport? If so, how much?
• Profitability analyzes and CO2 reduction for conversion of existing vessels vs. new construction.
• Life cycle analyzes for ships - case speedboats and/or cargo ships - Lifetime of vessels - co2 emissions - conversion or measures that can reduce emissions during the ship's lifetime.
• Return scheme/ circular economy model for ships.
• Is there an update of the policy apparatus to support wider and more retrofit solutions for ships, to make them more energy efficient?

Possible topics in collaboration with Maritime Cleantech cluster partners with assistance from the cluster administration

• Shipping aims to halve its emissions by 2050. How should a shipping company approach this goal in terms of investment and redevelopment programmes? (Shipping company)
• How to market/sell green fuels and technologies that have not yet been demonstrated in the market? For example hydrogen, fuel cells etc. (fuel producers, FC producers and the like.)
• Strategy for marketing hydrogen/ammonia as a safe and secure green fuel (producers).
• Green innovation: How to change from traditional offshore to deliveries in new value chains (supplier industry, shipyards, shipping companies).
• Efficient/appropriate incentive/public/industrial structure for the production and supply of new energy carriers from wind farms and other offshore locations.

Evaluation of various ways for Norway to fulfill the Paris-agreement

The objective is to compare various ways Norway can fulfill the Paris-agreement with respect to consequences for the Norwegian economy and for global emissions among other things.

Can or will energy transition hold back development

Clean up and transition in the north sea, energy companies, esg and responsive strategies, esg in finance, and eus taxonomy, how suited are batteries to solve the intermittency problem.

A study of the efficiency and suitability of batteries in order to solve the intermittency problem associated with new renewable energy such as solar and wind power.

Hydrogen and its role in Europe's energy transition

Transport and co2 emission reductions (or any segment: maritime, aviation, cars, etc), war, crisis and energy in europe, green energy and guarantees of origin.

During the last years, governments around the world have implemented different policies to promote investments in renewable production capacity. One of the main instruments is a policy known as guarantees of origin. These guarantees operate as a guarantee for final consumers that the electricity they consume comes from renewable energy sources.

An important characteristic of the guarantees is that the producers are free to sell the electricity and guarantees separately. What we are observing is that while electricity from Norwegian hydropower is largely sold to consumers in Norway, the guarantees from Norwegian hydropower is sold to consumers in Germany and the Netherlands. Despite the growing importance of this policy, there are few studies of the impacts of guarantees of origin on renewable production capacity.

In this master thesis, the students will investigate the effect of this policy instrument on renewable electricity capacity in Europe. What has Norway’s role been in promoting renewable energy capacity through guarantees of origin? What has the interaction been between guarantees of origin and other incentives to boost investments in renewable production capacity? And what are the implications of the de-coupling of the sale of the electricity with the sale of the guarantees?

This topic of research is suitable for many different types of methods, depending on the interests and skills of the students. The thesis can be based on either a statistical analysis, case study or modelling exercise.

Supervisor: Isabel Hovdahl and  Mario Blázquez .

Analysis of catch data in Norwegian fisheries

Organizing and analyzing data from the Norwegian directorate of fisheries.

Econometric analysis of the sales of new cars in Norway

Supervisor:  Øyvind Thomassen .

Contact: [email protected] .

I have three data sets that you can use for the thesis: 1) price lists with car model variant and some technical characteristics, 2) new registrations of car model engine variants, by age and sex of the registered owner, 3) the annual rules for calculating the registration tax (engangsavgift). 

For most uses, you will want to merge data sets 1) and 2). This will entail some tedious data work (probably using Stata or R), because of a lack of exact common identifiers. 

The data go up to 2015, but it may be possible to obtain more recent data. 

There are many questions that could be answered with the data, including saying something about the effect of the favorable tax treatment given to electric vehicles, which probably explains their large market share in Norway. 

To choose this topic you must have taken a course in econometrics.

Econometric analysis of data from the government vehicle register

Like my topic ‘Econometric analysis of the sales of new cars in Norway’, this topic is based on data on cars in Norway. However, for this topic, I currently do not have the data, but I believe they can be obtained from Statens Vegvesen (Norwegian Public Roads Administration).

My other topic uses data on the flow of new cars. This topic uses data on the stock of cars. The two data sources could conceivably be combined.

Background from a course in econometrics is needed.

Natural resource extraction nearby: opportunity or concern for non-resource firms?

How does natural resource extraction such as oil&gas production affect nearby firms in other sectors, such as manufacturing and services? Potential agglomeration effects could benefit firms, but increased competition for labor or more corruption might harm firms. Since firms are the backbone of every modern economy, these considerations are crucial to understand whether natural resources are a blessing or a curse.

Supervisor: Paul Pelzl .

Topics on Environmental Economics

Potential topics are:

• Zero emissions (in shipping/buildings/road veh/airplanes): too much, or just right?
• Certificates of Origin for Electricity; Stepchild or rising star?
• A carbon cap for Norwegian farmers: Let forests do what cows and farmers cannot?
• Carbon footprint and economic analysis for a firm/sector
• Hydrogen: which part is failing: cars, hydrogen or filling and logistics
• A new look at biomass and biofuels: can photosynthesis propel transport
• Oceans in a sustainability strategy
• Solar power: if a leap lies ahead, what can trigger it
• Decentralized power generation in Norway: framework and business analysis
• Renewable power in Norway: shall it expand, and with what instruments
• A role for Norway as a battery for Europe’s intermittent power
• A business analysis of Norway’s three proposed carbon capture and storage projects (cement, fertilizer, waste dump)
• Analysis of emission reduction prospects in Norwegian transport
• Econometric analysis of demand for energy (or carbon) intensive goods, transport
• Forests: More wood and biomass in buildings: Economic analysis of climate prospects
• Financial markets: is there evidence of ‘sin portfolios’ or ‘virtue’ (or green/fossil)? The value of fossil assets / promises in financial markets
• Analysis of CO2 markets
• Modeling energy exchange in Northern Europe

Analysis of electric batteries and improvements in electricity networks

In cooperation with ENOVA

Contact: Gunnar Eskeland  (NHH) and  Børge Nilssen Stafne (ENOVA)

Logistics: improvements in efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions

Contact: Gunnar Eskeland  (NHH) and  Arnt Gunnar Lium (ENOVA)

Electricity in the transport sector: Economic and environmental effects

Regulation and benchmarking of natural monopolies in the energy sector.

Supervisors: Endre Bjørndal and Mette Bjørndal .

Pricing and congestion management in wholesale electricity markets

Integration of renewable energy sources in electricity markets, local flexibility markets and demand response in the electricity sector, integration of regional electricity markets and use of hvdc interconnectors, european integration of intraday and balancing markets, sustainable energy and development.

Around the world, the governments are imple- menting policies to foster the introduction of renewable energy. In that context, there are different research questions to develop in a master thesis that could contribute to develop a sustainable economic system.

• Which will be the relation between renewable energy and hydrogen?
• Which are the policies introduced in cities to reduce carbon emissions?
• Which will be the impact of the adoption of renewable energy in women unemploy- ment? Could the introduction of renewable energy increase the gender gap?
• Which will be the changes in the design of electricity markets induced by the intro- duction of renewable energy?
• Which is the relation between hydrogen and lithium batteries? Which is the best way to store electricity in the short-term and in the long-term?
• Which policies could be implemented to promote energy effciency?
• How do the electricity grid need to change to accommodate renewable energy?

Supervisor: Mario Blazques de Paz

Transmission constraints

Electricity markets are moving through the integration around the world. Moreover, the countries are increasing their investments in renewable production capacity to fulfil with the agreements in carbon emission reductions. In that context, the transmission grid plays a crucial role promoting the integration of electricity markets and accommodating the renewable production capacity into the system. In re- lation with this topic, there are different research questions that could be of interest to develop a master thesis.

• Which should be design of electricity markets in the presence of transmission con- straints.
• Could the integration of electricity markets in Europe increase competition? Which will be the impact of that integration in the investments in transmission capacity, and in renewable production capacity?
• Which should be the relation between the spot and the redispatch market when the transmission lines are congested? How we can design those markets to increase com- petition?
• How should the regulator design transmission tariffs to guarantee investments in trans- mission capacity, and transmission effciency?

Supervisor:  Mario Blazques de Paz

Incentives, Contracts and Firm Behaviour

How do natural disasters affect local business activity evidence from indonesia.

Besides having adverse humanitarian effects, natural disasters may have a large detrimental impact on local business activity in the affected region. On the other hand, unaffected yet nearby regions may experience a surge in business activity, as these regions compensate for the neighboring downturn. The aim of this master thesis is to quantify these and potentially other effects using Indonesian data on various types of natural disasters and on manufacturing, thereby shedding light on the economic effects of natural disasters across space. The thesis requires some training in econometrics and motivation to do a considerable amount of data work. Regarding business activity, data comes from the Indonesian manufacturing plant census and can be provided by the supervisor; regarding natural disasters, data comes from https://www.desinventar.net/. Please note that a thesis on this topic cannot be written in Spring 2023 due to parental leave of the supervisor.

Key references

• Kirchberger (2017): Natural disasters and labor markets . Journal of Development Economics , Volume 125, pages 40-58.
• Gignoux and Menendez (2016): Benefit in the wake of disaster: Long-run effects of earthquakes on welfare in rural Indonesia . Journal of Development Economics , Volume 118, pages 26-44.

Like my topic ‘Econometric analysis of the sales of new cars in Norway’, this topic is based on data on cars in Norway. However, for this topic, I currently do not have the data, but I believe they can be obtained from Statens Vegvesen (Norwegian Public Roads Administration). See information here: https://www.vegvesen.no/om-oss/om-organisasjonen/apne-data/api-for-kjoretoyopplysninger/utvidet-utlevering-av-kjoretoyopplysninger/

Economics of organization and management control

Including the use of bonus pay (case studies or across companies), how to measure performance, balanced scorecard (or alternative ways to use key performance indicators for management control purposes), drivers of profitability in an industry or a company, beyond budgeting, transfer pricing, and organizational boundaries.

Supervisor: Iver Bragelien.

Streaming markets for music and books

Supervisor: Øystein Foros .

Interplay between content providers and distributors in digital platforms

The appstore battle with music and app providers (the case of fortnite and spotify), the war among consoles 2020: sony (playstation 5-) vs microsoft (xbox series), konkurransen i mobilmarkedet.

Sammenligne f.eks. Norge og Finland som har ulik markedsstruktur. Mye deskriptiv empiri for å bedre forstå markedet og forskjellen mellom landene.

Supervisor: Øystein Foros .

Kulturminister Trine Skei Grande har nylig foreslått å utvide bokavtalen. Det vil gi en lengre fastprisperiode og høyere priser på opptil 65 prosent av bøkene. Den norske bokavtalen, som gir forleggerne rett til å sette en fast pris på nye bøker, er havnet i søkelyset til Efta-landenes overvåkningsorgan Esa. Nylig besvarte Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet (NFD), på vegne av den norske regjeringen, en rekke spørsmål fra Esa om forholdet mellom bokavtalen og EØS-avtalens eksplisitte forbud mot prissamarbeid i artikkel 53. Her kunne det være interessant å sammenligne med kommisjonens sak mot Amazon ift most-favored nation (MFN) klausuler.

Personalisert prising

Med utgangspunkt i prosjektet Moving towards the market of one? Competition with personalized pricing and endogenous mismatch costs, jobbe med applikasjoner? Kan også knyttet opp mot AI.

Shipping, Logistics and Operations Management

Impact of climate change on vessel operations.

Utilizing weather data and AIS data, we aim to evaluate the influence of climatic events on routine maritime trade operations. Significant events, such as the draught restriction in the Panama Canal due to severe droughts, have resulted in costlier transits and prolonged waiting time durations. This thesis can investigate the externality cost of severe weather patterns, such as intensified El Niño.

Supervisor: Gabriel Fuentes

Climate Policy and Its Effect on Maritime Trade

By quantifying shipping emissions, including greenhouse gases (GHGs) and sulfur, a thesis on this topic can investigate the impact of maritime climate-related policies on the overall trajectory of vessel emissions. There's ongoing debate surrounding regulations like the IMO 2020 Sulphur Cap and the introduction of measures like the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII). We will evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness of these regulations.

Decision Support for Maritime Investments Amid Uncertain Climate Policies

Maritime investments face uncertainties with evolving climate-related policies. A seemingly recent and valuable asset today might become obsolete or uncompetitive due to policy shifts in the near future. A thesis on this topic could aim to introduce a model that navigates potential scenarios related to the progression of climate policies.

Dark Fleet Economics in Grain and Oil Trade

The phenomenon of "dark fleets" refers to vessels that operate in hidden or illegal capacities, often eluding detection through various means. Leveraging a blend of AIS (Automatic Identification System) data and satellite optical imagery, we can observe the activities of these fleets, particularly in the grain and oil trade sectors. Your thesis could focus on the externalities of the dark fleet on the legal market or the effect on trading patterns.

Working with Vake.ai

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman and Gabriel Fuentes

Tourist management

In 2019 before the sanitary emergency started, Norway received 5.88 million tourists representing 7,04 billion dollars and 1,7% of its GDP, reaching the highest levels in 2017. In this year, the tourism industry represented nearly 4,2% of Norwegian GDP and attracted around 170 billion NOK in total tourism consumption. These numbers show the potential of this industry for economic growth and depict some challenges. Particularly when we put the number of tourists in relation to the population of the country, it becomes clear the necessity to take a closer look at current policies and opportunities from point of view of operation research. 

For the City of Bergen, the cruise industry is especially important. Bergen receives the largest number of cruise tourists in the country, making of it one of the most visited cities in Scandinavia. 

It might be interesting for cruise companies to have touristic recommendations for their passengers, itineraries that provide the most benefits out the visit, and ensure the passengers will be back to the ship on time. But also, from the city hall perspective, it might be desirable to have a more homogenous distribution of the visitors across town in order to avoid crowds. Additionally, according to Bergen’s urbanization plan, there could be desirable areas of the city where it is more interesting to bring visitors and the money they spend on their trip, in the frame of urban development, social welfare, and environment. 

In order to assess the different locations, it is necessary to understand the city trends, socio-economic indicators, passenger preferences, and tourist offers, among others. Then use this information as support for an optimization model, allowing to suggest the best routes, both for the tourists and the City of Bergen. 

Main supervisor: PhD-candidate Andres Felipe Velez Correa .

Helicopter fleet composition and allocation

In the oil and gas industry, helicopters are widely used for personnel and cargo transport between offshore platforms and heliports on the land. Therefore, the decision-making regarding the composition of the helicopter fleet and the allocation of this resource is vital for a stable operation of oil & gas exploration and extraction. Such tactical decision affects various aspects of an oil company, including contract utilization, carbon footprint, plan robustness and operating expenses.

However, the common practice in the industry is that the decision of fleet composition and allocation is still manually made based on demand forecast and individual’s experience. Such decision-making process cannot guarantee optimal solutions, is not scalable, and would likely lead to low resource utilization rate and high operating cost.

We are now seeing a clear trend in the oil and gas industry which is to apply automation in its various and complex decision-making process with the support of optimization. In terms of the helicopter fleet composition and allocation problem in this case, a decision support tool is expected to facilitate the decision of helicopter chattering and deployment with stochastic demand for the next planning period. Moreover, resource sharing, namely utilizing idle helicopter resources from other operators, is also a promising opportunity to increase the overall efficiency on an industry level and hence is becoming increasingly popular among different oil companies and helicopter operators.

With its trademark solution DaWinci as the industry standard in personnel logistics management, Quorum is the software supplier for many of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. Quorum Software Norway, as the market leader, is now cooperating with several major players in the oil and gas industry to address various new challenges with new software planning tools. This master project will take advantage of Quorum’s expertise in logistics management in oil and gas industry, and look at some of the following issues:

• Literature review on related problems and topics
• Mathematical formulation of the problem
• Study the uncertainty involved in this problem and methods to handle such stochasticity
• Study and develop necessary solution methods
• Analyze the numerical results based on a realistic problem instance from Quorum

Students choosing this project should expect to visit Quorum Software’s Bergen office to work alongside our optimization engineers for up to a week.

Collaborator: Quorum Software, contact person Xin Wang ( [email protected] ).

Supervisor: Yewen Gu .

What is the value of better weather forecasts?

Using empirical case studies to quantify how more accurate short-term weather forecasting can improve chartering decisions for a ship operator.

Working with company Western Bulk.

Evacuation of large passenger ships

Large cruise ships can be hard to exit in emergency situations and face unique challenges regarding evacuation. The ship’s steel hull has so far precluded the use of wireless technologies, which implies that all communications must be cabled-based, not even cell-phones work in an emergency. Another challenge is that evacuation plans are static and cannot be adapted as the emergency unfolds, something important in this context as different factors, such as winds, waves and tilting of the boat, affect passenger behaviour and the evacuation itself. In an ongoing project we try to develop a practical and theoretically sound stochastic and dynamic evacuation model for a large passenger ships aided by innovative wireless technology.

The project is in cooperation with NTNU (that covers the technical parts with respect to engineering and ship design) while NHH cover the dynamic modeling of an evacuation. The new wireless technology comes from ScanReach at Sotra - https://www.scanreach.com/ - and they are closely involved in the project.

Possible theses would cover aspects (to be agreed upon between supervisor and student) of modeling the evacuation or solving resulting models. There are many challenges in the modeling so that the resulting model is fast, which is required in an emergency.

Supervisor: Stein W. Wallace

Cargo Scheduling

For e.g. breakbulk and chemical shipping companies it is challenging to find out which cargoes fit best together into a voyage such that all cargoes can be transported on voyages and ships travel the least possible distance. The aim of this topic is to create a model with typical restrictions and find a good weighing of the different aspects of the objective function. In cooperation with Dataloy Systems, you can use data to develop and test your model as well as discuss the underlying concepts.

Supervisor: Julio Cesar Goez

Small city logistics

Urban population growth is driving an increase in the amount of freight that goes into and out of cities. That growth poses an increasing challenge to freight transportation in smaller compact cities with difficult topology, which is typical for most Norwegian cities and numerous cities abroad.

This transportation challenge is exacerbated by phenomena such as an increase in internet trade, the demand for fast delivery, and a reduction in the ownership of private cars in the city centre which could be used for shopping. The result is an increase in the total volume of freight, and more critically, in the total number of deliveries, normally managed by a large variety of transportation companies.

Unless planned for and regulated, a consequence might be increased traffic, with enhanced energy consumption, that competes for available space and may affect living conditions for a growing urban population.

This project will study small city logistics, with a focus on Bergen, to find the options available for the authorities, business models for a better city logistics setup, as well as mathematical modeling. Will be done in cooperation with the City of Bergen, Vestland County, Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) at The University of Bergen. The project can be qualitative as well as quantitative.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway, and we offer two project grants of NOK 25,000.

Possible supervisors: Stein W. Wallace or Julio C. Goez .

Using autonomous vehicles to improve our emergency services

The aim of emergency medical services (EMS) is to provide timely assistance to emergencies in order to save lives. Within this service, quality and capacity have sometimes deteriorated because staffing is not satisfactory and because the organization and directives are not clear. My interest is to work on the use of autonomous vessels to help ameliorate the burden that EMS staffing represents in the case of boat ambulances, and to improve the logistics planning of the system.

The aim is to analyze the use of autonomous vessels to improve response times and coverage. For example, by combining autonomous vessels with geographic information systems, one may use real time information of potential patients to improve the deployment of the resources. In particular my interest is to explore the following key research topic: designing algorithms with predictive capabilities that can be included in real time systems and capable of managing a continuous feed of data points coming from users’ cell phones and other sources.

Supervisor: Julio C. Goez .

Repositioning of Empty Vessels in the Dry Bulk Shipping Market

Aim: find key drivers for decision-making process of repositioning empty vessels - current market conditions, sentiment - repeating patterns, etc.

Supervisor: Vít Procházka.

Logistics/sharing economy: Analytics for car-sharing models

Car-sharing provides short-term vehicle access to a group of user members who share the use of a vehicle fleet owned by a car-sharing organization that maintains, manages, and insures the vehicles. An example of this model in Bergen is bildeleringer. Managing the fleet involves decisions such as the size of the fleet, how to position and reposition the vehicles, maintenance schedules, and pricing approaches. Strong background on analytics required

Supervisor: Julio C. Goez

Optimization of requirements of cloud computing resources

The providers of online applications usually need to find the deployment of minimum cost for running it in the cloud. For the deployment, the planner on the application side must consider renting resources from cloud providers. However, there is a service level constraint that must be satisfied to ensure the quality of the service.

How to analyze the impact of introducing a scheduling software?

Scheduling takes an important role in making shipping as efficient as possible. We want to evaluate the quality of a schedule in practice. As the amount of information changes from what is available during planning to what is available when the plan comes into action, this is a complex problem. The aim of this topic is to find a model to evaluate a plan with respect to how it was used in practice. This will allow us to evaluate if companies improved their scheduling over time. Using data provided by Dataloy Systems, we want to test the model and for example analyse if the implementation of a scheduling software had a positive impact on the schedules.

Supervisors: Julio Cesar Goez

Modelling storage and capacity for scheduling for example for antarctic fishing

Fishing in the antarctic is a profitable business that is aiming to professionalize its scheduling. Fishing boats are fishing and at the same time producing various fish products on board, increasing their stock of fish products on board. On regular intervals they need to meet a cargo vessel to transfer all their cargo onto the cargo vessel. This is to avoid the fishing boat having to go all the way to the coast and losing valuable fishing time. We want to find a model that fits this operation and can be extended to other storage scenarios (storage on the cargo ship, storage at a warehouse the cargo ship delivers to)

Scheduling well in a single port

For a ship that should visit several terminals in a port to discharge cargo and load cargo scheduling these terminal visits is not trivial. Each terminal has an individual waiting list, each cargo potentially has a deadline when it needs to be discharged or loaded and additionally the ship is not allowed to be overloaded at any point in time. We are interested in a model to evaluate the quality of different solutions.

• Chancellor’s Message

Print Options

2023-24 edition, informatics, m.s..

Information technology is transforming the world around us, from electronic medical records, to games for learning and social change, from information systems that help us live together more sustainably to devices and applications that allow us to track the body in unprecedented ways. The M.S. program in informatics at UC Irvine helps position students to understand the relationship between people and computing: How do existing technologies shape human behavior, society and culture, and how can we design future technologies to better serve humanity?

The M.S. in Informatics is a heavily research oriented program aimed at students with bachelor’s degrees in a variety of disciplines (e.g. computer science, social science, the arts) who may or may not have been been part of the full time workforce already. In particular, this program is aimed toward students who seek to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between people and technology. While not all M.S. students will choose to do a Ph.D. following their Master’s, the research focus of this program makes it ideal for those considering a Ph.D. (such as our Ph.D. Informatics  program).

For students interested in pursuing a professionally-oriented degree, looking to find a position or advance their careers within a corporate context, and working directly with industry mentors and clients around questions of user experience and design, we encourage you to consider our MHCID program .

The research oriented M.S. in Informatics is organized around a set of core courses that introduces the fundamentals of informatics, followed by a broader range of potential elective courses through which students can choose to focus their learning. Throughout, students are exposed to the theory, tools, methods, approaches and practicalities of informatics research, including topics such as social computing, human-computer interaction and collaborative work. Many of the courses include project work, typically performed in teams, and frequently leading to concrete outcomes in the form of papers that may be developed into scholarly publications.

Most students in this program write a Master’s thesis to explore a particular research topic in depth. For two (or more if you wish) quarters, students writing theses will join a research group, contribute to a research project, and write a thesis summarizing your efforts. There is an alternate pathway in which students take a comprehensive examination instead of completing a thesis. With one of the largest and most diverse faculty in the world dedicated to the topic of informatics, UCI offers a broad range of projects from which to choose.

For additional information about this degree program, please see: https://www.informatics.uci.edu/grad/ms-informatics/

Requirements

Students must complete courses, including a research methods core, and research experience courses related to their final thesis. Students must maintain satisfactory academic progress according to the requirements of the program as maintained by the faculty and posted publicly.

To coincide with the completion of the M.S. thesis.

The selection of courses should form a coherent educational plan to be approved by the student's faculty advisor. Although the courses may be chosen from any graduate-level courses on campus, it is recommended that at least three be chosen from within the School of Information and Computer Sciences. At most, 12 units of IN4MATX 298 and IN4MATX 299 may be used as electives.

Final Examination

The M.S. thesis defense committee is formed in accordance to UCI Senate regulations. This committee must approve the following for the student to pass the final examination:

Thesis document : The student must prepare the written dissertation in accordance with Academic Senate regulations and present this document to the committee with enough advance notice for appropriate review and critique prior to an oral defense. Following an oral defense of this document, any changes required must be approved by the entire committee.

Oral defense : The student must pass an oral dissertation defense that consists of a public presentation of the student’s research followed by an oral examination by the student’s doctoral committee. To ensure the public has an opportunity to participate in this examination, the student must announce the defense title, date, and time at least two weeks prior to the event to all faculty and graduate students in the department.

Committee Requirements

Committee membership requires, at minimum, three UCI Senate members: one chair plus two general members. The Chair of the committee must hold a primary appointment in the Informatics Department. A faculty member with a joint appointment in Informatics may serve as co-Chair of the Committee. The majority of the committee must have an affiliated appointment in the Informatics Department. For students who are either 1) co-advised; 2) have members of their committee who are domestic or married partners; or 3) may have a financial interest in the work, an additional member affiliated with the Informatics Department is also required to protect against any potential conflict of interest.

Send Page to Printer

Print this page.

Download Page (PDF)

The PDF will include all information unique to this page.

2023-2024 Catalogue

A PDF of the entire 2023-2024 catalogue.

• Show search form Hide search form
• Quick links
• Staff search
• Search Search --> Websites Staff search Start search

Business Informatics (Master)

© Universität Wien / Barbara Mair

Graduates of the master’s programme in Business Informatics are able to develop and implement business information systems, introduce relevant organisational concepts in companies, support experts in developing and implementing business software applications, and conduct theoretical as well as applied research on the use of information and communication technologies. The discipline of business informatics is based on both models and procedures in business and economics, as well as technologies and methods in computer science. Therefore, students need a high level of analytical thinking and the ability to recognise organisational and technological dependencies.

Master of Science

Degree Programme Code: 066 926

4 semesters / 120 ECTS credits

Language: German

NO entrance examination

Facts & Figures

• Students: n.a.
• Graduates in the last academic year: n.a.
• Number of semesters needed for graduation (median): n.a.

Data updated on: 20.07.2023

Information about presentation & calculation

* Click here for further information on statistical data in the field of teaching and learning. (in German)

Instruction Language German

Please note that the instruction language of this programme is German . To start the degree programme, you need to hold a certificate of German proficiency on C1 level .

Admission Procedure

Admission procedure

Information on the required Description of qualifications

Information on Previous Studies:

In any case eligible degree programmes:

• Business Informatics (Bachelor)
• Master Access Guide

Getting Informed

StudiesServiceCenter (SSC) Computer Science

Students' Representatives Computer Science

Getting started

Orientation course

Orientation in the first semester

Semester planning

Study Programme

The master’s programme consists of the following modules:

• Group of compulsory modules: Computer Science (Advanced Software Engineering, Cooperative Systems, Foundations of Data Analysis)
• Group of compulsory modules: Economics (Business Management, Selected Topics: Business Administration and Corporate Law)
• Group of compulsory modules: Business Informatics (Business Process Management, Knowledge Engineering, Interoperability, Metamodelling, Digital Economy, Secure Digital Economy)
• Group of elective modules: Core Combinations (elective module: Business Intelligence; elective module: Semantic Information Systems)
• Compulsory module: Academic Research and Writing
• Master’s Thesis
• Master’s Examination

Five Concepts

which you will deal with during your studies:

• Business management
• Metamodelling
• Interoperability
• Workflow technologies
• Digital economy

... and many more.

 Overview of the programme structure & topics

Here you find the current offer of courses for this programme to gain better insight into the topics and structure. For more information please click on the respective level.

After Graduation

Our graduates are predestined for a career in the following occupational fields:

• consulting for national and international companies
• management and leading positions in the ICT industry
• management of large-scale IT projects
• interdisciplinary organisation projects
• strategic business development for IT governance
• business and knowledge engineering
• academic and industrial research.

Continuing after Graduation

• Center for Doctoral Studies - everything about doctorcal/PhD programmes at the University of Vienna
• Alumni of the University of Vienna
• Postgraduate Center - postgraduate programmes at the University of Vienna
• Uniport - career service of the University of Vienna

Graduates' Perspective on the Degree Programme

Degree programme in retrospect, graduates ....

• say that this degree programme receives the grade: 2.0 (good)
• rate the level of difficulty as: 3.8 (high)

→ These results are based on feedback from 41 graduates.

* You can find further assessments of the degree programme from its graduates’ perspective in the graduate survey of the   master's programmes in Computer Science and Business Informatics  (in German).

Career entry & paths

• find  employment immediately after graduation  on average.

*You can find further information on career entry and career paths in the tracking of graduates " MA Business Informatics ".