The Department of Economics at WU currently employs 23 tenured faculty (professors and associate professors), 11 researchers (post-docs) on fixed-term contracts, and 4 (assistant professors) on tenure-track positions. Currently, 19 doctoral students are enrolled in the PhD program.

The Department of Economics upholds internationally competitive standards and is committed to excellence in research. It offers comprehensive expertise in state-of-the-art theoretical and empirical methods, and its research and teaching covers a wide range of research topics. Research at the Department specializes in three pillar: applied microeconomics and industrial organization, macroeconomics and international economics, and economic policy in the broader fields of public economics, labor economics, political economy, the economics of digitalization, and behavioral economics. The members of the Department are committed to pursuing new scientific knowledge in economics and contributing to solving contemporary, global, societal problems.

The visibility of the Department as an outstanding research institution is reflected in rankings (most recently 10th in the "Handelsblatt" list of the best economics faculties in German-speaking countries) and further strengthened by training early-stage researchers in a high-quality PhD program.  It contributes to innovative basic research that expands the boundaries of modern economics and actively participates in Austrian and international economic policy debates. It maintains a vibrant international research network and constantly contributes to the exchange of knowledge through its research, mission activities, organization of seminars and events, and through guest researchers who regularly visit the Department.

The Department's research output is documented in numerous publications in internationally renowned journals, in books, third-party funded research projects, an own Economics Working Paper Series, and numerous lectures and scientific awards of its members.