The Department of Economics of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili was created in 2000 from the Department of Economics and Management Sciences that had agglutinated, up to that moment, all professors of subjects related to Economics and Business of the University. The notable growth experienced by the studies that were depending on the department, along with the corresponding increase of the number of professors and its academic obligations, advised this division.

Nowadays, the Department of Economics integrates the areas of Economic Analysis, Applied Economics and History and Economic Institutions. Inside these areas, approximately seventy professors develop their work, sixty per cent of which are full-time.

The principal aim of the Department of Economics is to offer to the society a high-level of university education, based on both educational and research quality of its faculty members. A work environment that stimulates the search of quality has been promoted, which attracts especially young professionals with great potential. As a consequence of this philosophy, the faculty combines both national and international backgrounds and nationality, fact that has contributed to a constant increase of the scientific production, so much in quantitative as qualitative terms.

On the other hand, the Department of Economics has a vocation to provide services to its more direct environment. An evidence of this is the importance of some of the projects of knowledge transfer that the department has led or in which it has collaborated: the Strategic Plans of the cities of the Tarragona Region; the connection of the Port of Tarragona to the new railway system; the first studies on the impact of the sanitary institutions in Catalonia, or on the impact of the dismantlement of a nuclear power station in Spain, are some examples.

From its creation, directors of the Department of Economics have been Martí Oliva (2000-2006), Ferran Mañé (2006-2009), Bernd Theilen (2009-2017), Juan Antonio Duro and currently Maria LLop Llop (from July 2022).