MBA Online

The DBA Program

The Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy (ICS), Hitotsubashi University, began offering a doctoral degree program for business executives in October 2002. The Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program, which is conducted in English and designed to provide business executives with doctoral-level education, is available at the university’s campus in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo.

Hitotsubashi ICS offers a DBA degree rather than a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) degree, because a DBA program places more emphasis on business problem-solving and its practical implications, while a PhD degree is intended to provide the necessary theoretical and scientific foundation for an academic career.

The three-year DBA program accepts two categories of students. The first category includes individuals who are graduates of the MBA program at Hitotsubashi ICS. These students are required to spend three years of the program under the supervision of their faculty advisor as full-time students, devoting the second year mostly to doing research and developing their thesis proposals, and the third year to writing their theses.

The second category consists of business practitioners, who have received an MBA degree from other business schools, a Master’s degree other than an MBA, or those deemed qualified by the Admissions Committee for exceptional cases. These students will spend the three years of the program under the supervision of their faculty advisor as part-time students, devoting weekends and winter/spring/summer breaks to doing research and developing their thesis proposals, and writing their theses. DBA candidates in this category may work full-time, but they must maintain residency in Japan while they are enrolled in the DBA program. DBA students in this category may audit MBA courses in the ICS International Business Strategy Program, subject to approval by their advisor and the faculty member teaching the course.

Professor Christina Ahmadjian is Director of the DBA Program. Students may select any member of the ICS faculty as their thesis advisor, contingent on approval by the DBA Program Committee and the faculty member.

For detailed information on admission procedures to the DBA Program at Hitotsubashi ICS, including all submission deadlines, please download the Application Package by clicking the link below (PDF format):

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)

Economics

The Department of Economics emphasizes both teaching and research, and sees them as mutually reinforcing. Faculty members are encouraged to engage in important research that leads to publication in leading international journals. Faculty members are also encouraged to apply rigorous methodologies to local economic issues that are of high academic value.

The Department’s research effort is focused on four specific areas in addition to the common core of microeconomics and macroeconomics. They are (1) econometrics; (2) economic growth and development; (3) industrial organization and theory of the firm; (4) international economics; and (5) China’s Economy.

Faculty members in the Department are highly regarded and their accomplishments are formally recognized in several studies of productivity in economics research. In a study of East Asian universities published in Economic Inquiry (October 1999), HKUST was ranked number one in East Asia. In a study commissioned by the European Economic Association (2001), HKUST was ranked first in Asia and 37th in the world. In a study of publications in econometrics published in Econometric Theory (2003), HKUST was ranked 17th in the world for its publications in three core econometrics journals and 26th in all theoretical econometrics publications.

The Center for Economic Development was established in 1995 with support from the Department. Its goals are to support research on the process of economic development, with emphasis on economic development in Greater China and the Asia-Pacific region. Some of the department’s members are active in the School’s multidisciplinary Center for Experimental Business Research.