Research and innovation is the path for ZUFE's further development. With increasing investment in research, ZUFE has been achieving breakthroughs in granted funds, sponsored projects, research achievements, and other core indicators, as well as making great strides in social service capacity and research aggregate with rapidly improving research performance.

In the last five years, ZUFE has received 46 Excellent Research Achievement Awards at provincial and ministerial level and above, and has taken charge of 247 scientific research projects at the national level and 501 at provincial and ministerial level. The number of national research projects of philosophy and social sciences it has undertaken ranks top among all provincial colleges and universities. As for academic work, the faculty members in the last five years have published 1143 high-level academic papers, among which 426 are published on Level-A journals, 19 on international TOP journals, and almost 700 indexed by SCI, SSCI, A&HCI, and EI, and 247 academic monographs (or translated work). Besides, ZUFE possesses one key research base for philosophy and social sciences of Zhejiang Province, two provincial 2011 Collaborative Innovation Centers, one provincial new-type key discipline think tank, three provincial new-type college and university think tanks. Four teachers are awarded the Sun Yefang Economics Science Prize, the highest honor to China's economists, for works they authored or co-authored.

ZUFE has set up the Library of Sun Yefang Economics Science Prize, which has a systematic and comprehensive collection of all 224 award-winning achievements and introduction to the winners since the first Sun Yefang Economics Science Prize in 1984. The Library, with Sun Yefang Economics Science Foundation as co-sponsor, held the China Economist Forum, which has a great influence on the field of economics research. ZUFE is the only one in China authorized by the Nobel Prize Foundation to have the Library of Nobel Prize Works on Economics. ZUFE has then set up a workstation for Nobel Prize Laureates in Economics and three of the Laureate winners have been invited to join the station. 

Led by discipline construction and boosted by system optimization, ZUFE will closely follow the strategic needs of national economic and social development, effectively promote the supply-side structural reform of scientific research, and strengthen the construction of scientific research platforms and scientific research teams, to comprehensively improve ZUFE's capability of scientific research and social service.