[MagnumOpus]

I know - I went to Oxford instead of LSE for my masters degree exactly because the reputation of the latter is not there outside a narrow subset of finance/econ professionals in the UK. Even though the LSE programme was older and more established and cheaper.

The same is true in the US as well: The University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania are probably world beating for economics and finance research respectively -- but I would still recommend people to go to Harvard/Stanford for an economics-focused undergrad or finance MSc or MBA if they have the choice, due to the name recognition and the network...