Research at FEBA
The Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEBA) at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia was re-established after the dramatic changes in 1990 in order to respond to the needs of the development of market economy and democratic society in Bulgaria. Eighteen years later the Faculty became one of the leading institutions for teaching and research in the field of Economics and Business in Bulgaria according to research papers of experts of the World Bank. Now FEBA produces high quality experts in economics and business. For achieving this FEBA has developed into a center of economic thought in Bulgaria with increasing international research activities and thus contributing to the integration of research in Europe and beyond.
Over the last eleven years FEBA has organized a series of international annual conferences on current economic and/or business problems. As co-organizers were involved leading researchers in economic, social and institutional problems of transition economies and economies in the period of accession to the EU from Switzerland, Germany, Greece and France. The participation of young researchers and PhD students was especially encouraged by providing a special forum for them. All the research contributions have been published in the annual journal of the University or in special editions.
Since 2006 FEBA is regularly organizing a Summer School on Reseach Methods for doctoral students from Bulgaria and other South East European countries.
Every week FEBA (The Statistics and Econometrics Department) and the Institute of Mathematics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Probability and Statistics Department) hold joint seminars on Risk Theory and its application in Finance.
FEBA has close links with the Society of Actuaries in Bulgaria. Lecturers from the Statistics and Econometrics department have joint publications with the City University of London Cass Business School. They also have publications in the Scandinavian Actuarial Journal and the International Journal of Applied Probability.The Statistics and Econometrics Department also have joint publications with Prof. Erik Pentecost (UK) on Price and Output Dynamics under a Currency Board.
The Management department has made extensive studies on the corporate culture in Bulgaria. Joint teams from the Universities of Neuchatel and Sofia have conducted in-depth survey of the SMEs business culture in different sectors. The results have been published in three books.
A team from the Economics department has publications on critical issues like Defining the poverty line, Income inequality measures, The general trend to income inequality in Bulgaria and others.
FEBA has long-term institutional bilateral agreements for exchange of lecturers and joint research with leading universities in Germany and France: Cologne, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Leipzig, Saarbrücken and Lille and Bordeaux 4. The topics of joint research cover all aspects of the problems of transition economies.
The Faculty has recently successfully passed accreditation and continues to teach PhD students.
During the last few years FEBA has successfully participated in several European projects – as a coordinator in the IB Tempus project, the task of which was to train Local Government staff in areas of Economics and Management; Jean Monnet project on SMEs and EU enlargement with main contributions from young researchers.