Information for the Master Thesis
Place in the Master's Final Seminar = Writing the Master's Thesis
For writing the master thesis there is no centrally organized allocation procedure at our faculty as there is for the master seminars and scientific projects. Thus, there is also no fixed schedule to which you have to adhere. This means that you have to become active yourself. You have to apply independently to the individual chairs and find a topic for your Master's thesis.
Each chair sets its own application deadlines and has its own requirements that you must meet in order to write your master's thesis. Some chairs offer topics that you can work on during your master's thesis. With other chairs, however, you must independently develop a research question and thus a topic. For this purpose, you will usually prepare an exposé in which you explain the scientific question, present the economic relevance of the topic, and show the scientific method(s) to be applied. Since you are not entitled to a specific topic, but also not to write your Master's thesis in a certain focus and/or at a certain chair, we recommend that you inform yourself early on the websites of the respective chairs. An overview of all chairs and professorships can be found on the faculty website as well as here:
| Business Economics | Economics |
| Accounting and Control | Public Economics |
| Internationales Management | Applied Economics |
| Business Taxation | Economic Policy |
| Banking and Finance | Macroeconomics |
| Strategic Management and Organization | Behavioral Social Policy |
| Operations Management | Economics (President IWH) |
| Marketing | Economics: Productivity and Innovations (Department Head IWH) |
| Management Science | Financial Economics (Department Head IWH) |
| Accounting | Banking and Financial Systems (Deputy Department Head IWH) |
| E-Business | Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management (Deputy Department Head IWH) |
| Entrepreneurship | Financial Economics (2 JP) |
| Empirical Economic Research | |
| Economics of Business and Law | Law |
| Financial Management and Innovation Finance | Chair of Law and Economics |
| Behavioral International Management | |
| Production and Logistics | |
| Experimental Economics (JP) | |
| Data-Driven Decision Support (JP) |
Either you will find general information on the websites of the chairs or the information will be adjusted regularly/rotationally.
• If you want to write your master thesis in a summer semester, inform yourself in January/February of the previous winter semester.
• If you want to write your master thesis in a winter semester, inform yourself in June/July of the previous summer semester.
Each department has different requirements for an application. Actively inform yourself about the individual requirements and submit a professional application. As noted above, you are not entitled to a specific chair, and chairs may also hand out rejections due to capacity shortages and strict requirements, so we strongly recommend that you apply to multiple chairs. So include chairs in your selection that may not be your first preference. As a rule, a chair supervises a maximum of 8-10 master's theses per semester. Chairs in high demand may well receive up to 50 applications for these slots. Be aware that you need to give yourself enough time to apply for the master thesis in order to have a realistic chance of getting one of these highly demanded places.
If you have applied to more than one chair and received more than 3 rejections (i.e., at least 4 rejections), please contact the Dean of Studies office of your faculty. In your email, please list which degree program you are studying, which chairs you applied to, and include the rejections you received.