Business and management studies have been confirmed as the most active areas of research in British universities with the publication of the latest and final Research Assessment Exercise.

The results of RAE 2008, published last Thursday, reveal that academics reviewing the work of their peers in business schools and related academic departments across the UK had to plough through the output of more than 3,000 researchers in the field of business and management studies, more than 800 economists, as well as another 300 researchers whose work was submitted under the classifications of accounting and finance or information management.