grijalva-nowell - phd economic program rankings.pdf

8/14/2019 grijalva-nowell - Phd economic program rankings.pdf

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Southern conomic Journal 2008, 74(4). 971-996

A Guide to Graduate Study in Economics:Ranking Economics Departments by Fieldsof ExpertiseTherese C. Grijalva* and Clifford Nowellf

Ph.D. programs in economics are ranked overall and by subject field. The results provideinsight to students researching graduate programs in economics in specific subject fields.Results indicate that (i) difTerences in overall research productivity measures diminish as auniversity s rank declines; (ii) a university ranked highly in a particular subject field may be theresult of a single, extremely productive faculty member; and (Hi) many programs outside thetraditional top 20 programs are ranked high in specific subject fields.JEL Clas.siflcation: A 11 A2 2 A23

I. IntroductionEach year, thousatids of undergraduates apply for admission to graduate schools in

economics intending to obtain a Ph .D. M any of these students have little idea on how to choosea graduate program, and many go to an undergraduate adviser looking for advice. Prospectivegraduate students and iheir advisers have little published research to help them in the process ofchoosing what schools best match the u nde rgrad uate s skills and interests.

This study highlights many of the characteristics of departments that offer doctoraldegrees in economics and provides information on both overall productivity and productivityby subject field. This research is significant for those looking to obtain a Ph.D. in economicsbecause the choice of where to attend graduate school has been shown to be important in bothacademic and nonacademic job markets. Research into the careers of Ph.D. economists(Barbezat 1992; McMillen and Singell 1994; Stock and Alston 2000; Siegfried and Stock 2004)consistently indicates that graduates from top-rated schools fare better in academic andnonacademic job markets than their peers from lower-ranked programs.

Based on the finding that the quality of the school influences outcomes in the job market,the best advice for those applying to graduate school in economics may simply be to apply tothe best schools to which you will likely be admitted. Yet this advice is of little valtie for thosewho are unlikely to be admitted into a top program yet have a strong interest in one of themany subject fields of economics and a strong desire to pursu e a par ticular field. This group ofstudents is left getting advice from an undergraduate adviser who cannot be expected to know


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972 Therese C rijalvaand Clifford Nowellthe strengths of economics departments across the country or to search the Web pages of ll theprograms that offer a Ph.D. looking for clues as to what school is the best match.

In this article, we provide information to undergraduate students and their advisers on theresearch strengths of 129 economics depa rtme nts tha t offer Ph.D , degrees in the United Statesand to identify schools that a re rank ed highly in the many different subject fields of econom ics.This article should also provide guidance to departments hiring new Ph.D. candidates within aspecific field and to job candidates looking for information on potential academic employers.

This article ditTers from the many papers ranking the quality of economics dep artm ents byidentifying the relative strength of ll Ph.D. programs and by specifically providing informationon all the major subject fields in economics. Although Tschirhart (1989) ranks departments infields of expertise, only a limited set of fields is identified, and departments are ranked usingdata that are now over 20 years old. U S News and W orld eport also provides a rankin g ofeconomics departments by field. Their ranking is based on survey responses of departmentchairs who were asked to rank all departments on a five-point scale. Department rankings byfield can also be found on the Ec onPhd.net website (http://www .econphd.net)- This site rank sdepartments by field, using publications in 63 highly ranked economics journals during the1993-2003 period. The data we used as the basis for this article are more comprehensive andcover a larger time frame. We used all journals in which economists at the Ph.D.-grantinginstitutions in the United States had published during a 20-year period. Our data set consists ofpublications in 254 jour nals over the 20-year period 1985-2004. This analysis provides by farthe most detailed, complete ranking of departments by field in the literature.

In addition to simply identifying the top 20 schools in each field, other information, notfound elsewhere, is provided on the relative importance of the field at the school and how thescholarly output is distributed across the department s faculty. To measure the concentration offaculty in a field, we calculate a H erfindahl-Hirschman Index (HH I). The H H I is particularlyimpo rtant for an un dergra duate to consider. Planning to obtain a P h.D . from a school in hopes ofstudying with a single person is a risky undertaking not only because the faculty member maymove but also because any single faculty mem ber can m entor only a limited num ber of stude nts.

We recognize that ranking departments is fraught with danger. Thursby (2000) haspointed out that using single measures of departm ent productivity suggests differences betweenmany departments that are meaningless, a finding we reiterate when solely aggregate measuresof performance are used. However, by providing detailed inform ation on depa rtm ents by fieldand by identifying the publication patterns of the faculty within the field, we are able tohighlight some differences that aggregate measures gloss over.

2. MethodsSimilar to Tschirhart (1989), the data-gathering stage consists of four basic steps: (i)

identifying all Ph.D .-grantin g institutions in economics as of the 2004 spring semester, (ii)identifying all tenure-track or tenured faculty as of the 2004 spring semester, (iii) acquiring a list


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Ranking E conomics Departments by Fields 973To identify the universities offering doctoral degrees in economics, we used the website

niainiained by the University of Albany.^ This site contained a list of all economicsdepartments with Ph.D. programs at American and Canadian universities and was verified withPetersons uide lo raduate Schools. ^ Based on this, we identified 129 programs located in theUnited States that offered doctoral degrees in economics as of the spring of 2004.The second step, identifying all tenure-track or tenured faculty for each university, wasaccomplished by accessing economics department Web sites. A slight shortcoming of thisapproach is that faculty lists are highly dependent on whether a department maintains andupdates their faculty lists. Removing faculty members without any publications resuhed in over2600 faculty names. In the few cases where faculty appeared on multiple department websites,we included the faculty member in the department where he or she had a permanent andcurrent affiliation. We recognize that there are some faculty who are members of a departmentother than economics (e.g., the Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences atNorthwestern University) yet contribute to the education of graduate students and areproductive in the field of economics. Determining who these faculty are and the extent to whichthey are involved in the economics department made it impractical to include them in theanalysis.

The third step focused on acq uiring jou rna l publications for each faculty member listed inthe Journal of Economic Literature datab ase Econlil. The da tabase was queried for thepublications of tenure-track faculty identified by the 129 dep artm ents. Faculty were drop pedfrom the analysis if Econlit indicated that they had no published articles. This study focused onarticles published between 1985 and 2004. Over this time period, Econlit cataloged over 38,000publications of faculty who were employed in Ph.D. economics programs as of the spring of2004.^ Further, Econlit provided four essential pieces of information that would be needed foranalysis: (i) article source, (ii) page numbers, (iii) number of authors, and (iv) Journal ofEconomic Literature subject codes. The article source would be needed in order to assess thequahty of the article. The credit each author received for a publication was weighted by thenumber of authors and page length. The greater the number of coauthors, the less creditassigned to each coauthor, and the greater the length of the article, the greater the creditassigned to each coauthor.'' The subject codes would be needed to sort articles by a field ofexpertise.

The final step w as assigning a quality index, Qj, to each journ al. W e used both the impactfactors published in the 2004 Social Science Citation Index (SSCI scores) and rankings based on citatio ns per cha rac ter in 1990 for articles published between 1985 and 1989 (JEL scores)proposed by Laband and Piette (1994)7 Many publications contained at least one or both anSSCI and a JEL sco re. There were 107 jour nals c ontaining both an SSCI and a JEL score.There were an add itional 131 with only an SSCT score and an add itional 16 with only a JE Lscore. Thus, the total number of journals indexed in the SSCI that we used in our analysis was238.and the total num ber of jou rna ls indexed in the JEL that we used in ou r analysis was 123.

' Available at http://www.albaiiy,cdu/econ/eco_phds.htnil (July 2007).* Available at http://www.petcrsoiis.com/graduate_hom e.asp?path=gr.home (July 2007).Coiiuth ors listed as et al. rathe r than by name in Econlit are not identified specifically by Econlit.


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974 Therese C. Grijaha and Clifford Now ellTable 1. The JEL Classification System for Journal ArticlesCodes Beginning wilh the Letter DescriptionA Gene ral economics and teachingB Methodology and history of economic though tC Mathem atical and quantitative methodsD MicroeconomicsE Macroeconomics and monetary policyF International economicsG Financial economicsH Public economicsI Hea lth, educa tion, and welfareJ Labo r and demographic economicsK Law and economicsL Industrial organizationN Econom ic historyO Econom ic developm ent, technological chan ge, and grow thP Econom ic systemsQ Ag ricultural and natu ral resource ecotiomicsR Urb an, rural, and regional economicsPublications that had neither an SSCI nor a JEL score were dropped from the analysis. Itshould be noted that although the SSCI indexes 72jou rna ls in the economics discipline, we useall publications identified by Econlit and indexed in the SSCI, even if outside the economicsdiscipline, in calculating productivity.

Following Tschirharl 1989), articles were adjusted by number of au tho rs and page length.The first step consisted of dividing the number of pages of article /,pagesi., by the number ofauth ors ), thus ensuring that each auth or received l//i credit times the numb er of pages. Thesecond step consisted of taking the value from the first step{pageSjdivided byn )and dividing itby the average length of all articles frotn the same jou rna l j pj). The weighting that eachcoauthor of article / in publication j W j receives is given by

_ pagesi/mVVjj _Pj

The quality, Qj,of each article was then multiplied by Wjj yielding a productivity value, Fy,indicating the weighted quality assigned to each article assigned to the author. These weightedproductivity values were summed by individual and then by school. The results presented inthis study are based primarily on the SSCI scores because of the broader coverage of the SSCIand because the SSCI includes many ofthe newer journals that began publication after 1985.

In preparing to rank schools by subject fields, the JEL classification system was used.^ TheJEL classification system consists of 18 different subject fields. We eliminated one subject field.M {business administration and business economics, marketing, and accounting). Therem aining 17 subject fields are listed in Table 1. The subject field with the greatest num berof faculty publications was D, microeconomics, and the field with the least number of facultypublicatiotis was JEL code B, methodology and history of economic thought.


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Ranking Economics Departments by Eields 9753 . Resul ts

After gathering and cleaning the data and making the previously mentioned calculations,rankings are computed. The results are presented in Tables 2 and 3.

The second column of Table 2 provides the overall produc tivity rank of all 129departments. This ranking was computed by summing Fy for each university, with the topuniversity having the greatest overall productivity sum. Although it is similar to rankings foundin Graves, Marchatid, and Thompson (1982) and Dusansky and Vernon (1998), somedilTerences are apparent. These differences can be attributed to the difference in time periodsanalyzed, the inclusion of all articles listed in Econlit rather than a subset, and the use of theSSCI for the quality index.

The third column in Table 2. Z-S core , indicates the number of standard deviationsthe school's productivity rank is above or below the mean productivity rank. Only 44 of the129 schools have a positive Z-score, indicating that the distribution of overall productivity isskewed to the right, A noticeable feature of this skewness is that distinction between schoolsdiminishes as the rank declines. For example, the top-ranked school. Harvard, has a Z-scoreof 5.08, and the fifth-ranked school, Yale, has a Z-score of 2.18. a substantial difference.However, as we move lower in the rankings, the 70th-ranked school, the University ofMassachusetts, has a Z-score of - 0 . 4 3 , and the 80th-ranked school, the University ofDelaware, has a Z-score of -0.50, a very small difference. The ordinal rankings presented inmuch of the literature that ranks economics departments miss the fact that helow arelatively small group of top programs, the differences in aggregate productivity becomefairly small.The fourth column of Table 2, Per Faculty Ran k, shows how each school ranks whentheir total productivity sum is divided by the number of publishing faculty within thedepartment; it represents the average productivity of publishing faculty in a department andinay be the best indicator of the quality of the faculty for potential graduate students. Forexample, the California Institute of Technology has an overall rank of 8 and an average rankof 7. suggesting tha t the lower overall rank of the depa rtm ent is greatly influenced by thesmaller size of the department and not due to the productivity of each publishing facultymem ber. A student attending this institution would likely obtain an education from to p 10faculty even though the relatively small department size dampens the overall productivityranking. The fifth column of Table 2 indicates the overall productivity ranking of departmentsbased on the jou rna l ra nkings of Laban d an d Piette (1994) that appeared in the Journal ofEcono mic Literature Notice that rankings using the SSCI or those calculated by Laband andPiette (1994) identify the same top 10 schools, and there is only one difTerence in the top 20schools.

The sixth column of Table 2, To p Field. indicates each dep artm ent's best subject field.Top field was determined by summing each department's productivity for each JEL category,using the first JEL code identified by the author as a guide and then choosing the subject fieldwith the highest sum. The seventh column of Table 2 shows the HHI for each school. The HHIis typically used to tneasure the degree of market co ncen tration for a p articular industry. In this


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986 Therese C rifalva and Clifford Nowell

where s represents the productivity share of the /th faculty member. Vahies for the index canrange from 0 to 1, depending on the distribution of publication patterns across the faculty atthe school. A value of 1.0 indicates that all the publications result from a single individual., anda value of 0 implies that the publications are spread equally among the faculty in the area.^

The eighth column of Table 2, Field Strength Inde x, dem onstrates how well eachdepartment does in its top field relative to the department that is the number one rank in thatparticular field. For example, Harvard's top field is financial economics, and it is the top-ranked department in fmancial economics; hence. Harvard has a field strength index of I.O.Princeton University's top field is microeconomics (JEL code D), although its field strengthindex in microeconomics is 0.88, indicating that it produces 88% of the research of the top-ranked school in the microeconomics category .' It is imp ortant to note that some universitiesmay not offer a field in their top field (see footnotes for Table 2). Finally, the last column ofTable 2, Average Ph.D . Gra dua tes (2002-2007), provides information on the size of eachprogram , and is included to provide additional information to potential app lica nts . Asignificant portion of gradua te education is obtained from one's classmates. As such, this figureprovides information regarding the activity level of the graduate education within adepartment. A department may have many productive scholars but may not be a,s activelyengaged in its graduate education.

Table 3 identifies the field rankings for each of the 129 departments using the first JELcode identified by the auth or . All articles were assigned to a field on the basis of the assumptionthat the first JEL code listed represents the primary subject field of the article. Once an articlewas categorized, the productivity value for each article. F,,, was summed by subject anduniversity, yielding a total productivity score within a particular field for a particulardepartment. While this information is useful to potential graduate students and others, itshould be noted that not all fields are offered at each university. Thus, potential graduatestudents should confirm that a field of interest is available at a particular university beforeapplying.

Table 4 identifies the top 20 schools in each field. This table also identifies the number offaculty in each school who publish in the field regardless of where they publish or whether thejournal is listed in the SSCI. Table 4 also shows the HHI for each of the top 20 schools in thefield. Fo r examp le, referring to Carnegie M ellon U niversity, the value for the H HI in generaleconomics and teaching (JEL subject code A) is 0,18. whereas for Cornell University the HHI is1.0. At C arnegie Mellon, publication in this field is spread out amo ng the eight m embers of thefaculty who publish in this area. At Cornell, however, all the publications listed in SSCI areattributed to a single faculty member. (Although at Co rnell, three people have published in thisarea, only one person has published in journals listed in the SSCI.) As another example, for' It should be noted that in ihe case of an HHI of 1.0, more than one faculty member may publish in this area, yetbecause other faculty members publica tions may not be indexed in the SSC I, they are nol recognized in our data as


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Ranking Economics Departments hy Fields 987Table 4. Subject Field Rankings for Ph.D.-Granting Institutions in EconomicsSchool CategoryRanking SSCIJEL category A: eneral economics andleachingU VirginiaCarnegie Mellon\JU Nebraska, LincolnUC BerkeleyIndiana UM ITU OregonVanderbilt UGeorge Mason UU ChicagoU Texas. AustinPrinceton UPurdue UGeorgia State UHarvard UNew York UCornell UColumbia UU MichiganUNC. Chapel HillJEL category B: MethodologPrinceton UUC BerkeleyGeorge Mason UNew York UM ITColumbia UHarvard UYale UJohns Hopkins UDuke UPennsylvania State UU MinnesotaU Missouri, Kansas CityU ChicagoU Illinois at ChicagoGeorgia State UCarnegie Mellon UColorado State UUC DavisU Nebraska, Lincoln

1234567891011121314151617181920

Number ofPublishing Faculty

4861056651225564923346

; and history ofeconomic thought1234567891011

121314151617181920

991443263261445315432

JEL category C: M athematical and quantitative methodsY a l e UUC San Diego 12 2017

HH I

47 18 770.30 8424

98 26 53 510330.65 66 24 73i85

84

0.23 338

84 46LOO 38 92135

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37 33 94LOO 31 53 52 8

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ImportanceIndex

0.060.060.290.020.120.010.100.040.060.020.040.010.090.050.01 ;0.010.02 .0.010.010.030.020.010.070.020.010.010.000.010.020.020.020.020.240.010.020.030.010.110.010.060.350.30


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988 Therese C Grijalva and Clifford Now ellTable 4. ContinuedSchoolPrinceton UUC BerkeleyNew York UU C L AU PennsylvaniaU Southern CaliforniaOhio State UBoston UCalifornia Inst TechU Illinois, UrbanaCornell UStanford UR i c e UTexas A&M U

CategoryRanking SSCI789101112131415161718

1920JEL category D: MicroeconomicsUC BerkeleyPrinceton UHarvard UNew York UM ITStanford UU ChicagoYale UUCLANorthwestern UCalifornia Inst TechU PennsylvaniaOhio State UU Southern CaliforniaJohns Hopkins UU MinnesotaU MichiganU VirginiaBoston UColumbia U

12345678910121314151617181920

Number ofPublishing Faculty2422212317101615U181319111435282825225242826221115181691527131719

JEL category E: Macroeconomics and monetary policyHarvard UPrinceton UUC BerkeleyM ITNorthwestern UColumbia UNew York UU C L AU Michigan

123456789

252018121015161519

HHI0.090.130.100.120.130.180.290.240.260.140.170.090.180.170.060.070.070.080.09O.IO0.090.070.110.110.190.100.140.180.270.120.070.150.110.190.080.120.170.240.210.190.120.120.09

ImportanceIndex0.090.090.160.130.180.220.150.130.250.170.160.090.280.270.170.150.100.230.130.220.210.170.170.180.420.210.210.260.290.26O.Il0.200.150.110.120.150.110.110.160.150.130.110.09


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Ranking Economics Departments by Fields 98 9Table 4. ContinuedSchoolStanford UUC DavisU MinnesotaOhio State UU Wisconsin, MadisonU RochesterGeorgetown U

ategoryRanking SS I

14IS1617181920

JEL category F: International economicsPrinceton UHarvard UColumbia UUC BerkeleyU Wisconsin, MadisonU C L AU MichiganUC DavisStanford UU Maryland, College ParkUC Santa CruzU Colorado. BoulderUC San DiegoNew York UU PennsylvaniaU VirginiaU WashingtonGeorgetown UDuke UVanderbilt U

12345678910

XI12131415161718192

JEL category G: Financial economicsHarvard UPrinceton UCarnegie Mellon UU ChicagoM ITUC San DiegoUC BerkeleyNew York UStanford UOhio State UU Illinois, UrbanaColumbia UY a l e UU MichiganDuke UCornell U

1234S67891U

1213141516

Number ofPublishing Facully111312111612

131916161529147121391376913U12

221416112111U14U1516911

HHI0.17 13

17 16 12 39ClM 15 46 35 38 21 27 31 6 ^435 35 13 18 24

M 12^ 16 18 26O.U 16 18 22 21 26 22 11 18 43

ImportanceIndex0.080.160.160.110.090.190.170.120.090.220.080.160.100.090.190.080.150.240.230.080.060.100.110.180.160.110.120.15O.Il0.330.150.07 .0.100.040.070.060.090.100.050.040.040.090.08


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990 Therese C. rijalva and Clifford NowellTable 4 Continued

Category Number ofSchool Ran king SSCI Publishing FacultyJEL category H: Public economicsU MichiganM ITHarvard UUC BerkeleyU Maryland, College ParkRice USyracuse UU KentuckyColumbia UMichigan State UGeorgia State UBoston UCornell UPrinceton UStanford UUC San DiegoU Wisconsin. MadisonCarnegie Mellon UU ChicagoU Texas, AustinJEL category I: Health educationHarvard UPrinceton UU MichiganM ITCity U of New York (CU NY )Cornell UU Illinois, ChicagoStanford UU PennsylvaniaU Maryland, College ParkJohns Hopkins UMichigan State UOhio State UU ChicagoBoston UUC BerkeleyD u k e UY a l e UU Wisconsin, MadisonNorthwestern U

1234567891011121314151617181920

andwelfare12345678910

11121314151617181920JEL category J: Labor anddemographic economicsM ITHarvard U 12

1914172011618914101591316151110136101511181411799798109871571066

1917

HHI

0.240.210.160.190.160.320.100.460.160.450.160.280.130.130.140.360.540.180.290.290.200.200.260.200.220.290.330.630.300.170.320.160.300.270.440.120.500.170.480.230.120.13

ImportanceIndex

0.140.080.050.060.150.240.160.310.070.100.210.080.080.020.050.050.050.080.040.080.070.060.100.050.170.090.160.050.070.080.100.070.060.040.050.020.070.030.050.040.150.10


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Ranking Economics Departments by Fields 991Table 4. ContinuedSchoolMichigan State UUCLAU ChicagoU PennsylvaniaBoston UU T exas, AustinY a l e UNorthwestern UStanford UBrown UU South CarolinaNew York U

CategoryRanking SSCI

67891011121314151617City U of New York (CU NY ) 18U Illinois, ChicagoSyracuse U 1920

JEL category K: Law andeconomicsUC BerkeleyHarvard UVanderbilt UU ConnecticutUC San DiegoPrinceton UU ChicagoM ITFlorida State UU MichiganGeorge Mason UBoston UEmory USUNY BuffaloClemson UYale ULI Wisconsin, MadisonColumbia UU AlabamaWayne State U

1234567891011121314151617181920

JEL category L: Industrial org niz tionUC BerkeleyM ITUCLAU ChicagoStanford UHarvard UNorthwestern UU MichiganU Virginia

123456789

Number ofPublishing Faculty132013151561813IS116. 17ISU16

9424284574-. 42 j' 62

'- 5 4

26162017219. 19

1 9136

HHI0.450 09a i 30 160 130 450.150.320 130 110 460 110 130.250 12

0 25g j 50 . ^0 450 930 170 470 34

A0 400 420.750*71fwMSSJ24

4 i i60.ioo n0 14^2 2O0 23

ImportanceIndex0.270.140.150.220.180.23O.IO0.110.100.200.600 080.270.270.21

0.02O.OI0.070.140.03O.OI0.02O.OI0.060.010.040.020.080.120.060.010.010.010.090.07

0.090.090.130.110.110.040.090.050.10


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992 Therese C Grijalva and Clifford NowellTable 4 . ContinuedSchoolU Southern CaliforniaUC DavisU I l l inois . UrbanaNew York UGeorge town UYale UU Wisconsin M adisonPrinceton UJEL category N : EconomicUC BerkeleyHarvard UVanderbilt UM ITUC DavisStanford UPrinceton URutger s UU ArizonaU C L AU Colorado BoulderU Illinois ChicagoColumbia UY a l e UU DelawareNor thwes te rn UU MichiganOhio State USUNY BinghamtonNew York UJEL category 0: EconomicHarvard UUC BerkeleyU C LANew York UM ITPrinceton UBrown UColumbia UYale UCornell UU ChicagoStanford UD u k e UU MinnesotaU MichiganNor thwestern U

ategoryRanking SS I1314567892

history 1234567S91011121314151617181920

Number ofPublishing Faculty113642599

873656444675255632

H H I0.550.140.280.140.180.150.180.160.250.340.320.430.300.390.460.350.330.200.480.560.280.390.810.320.470.310.630.52

development technological change andgrowth12345678923456

222325362IT5345868

0.080.120.140.170.330.110.200.190.130.110.610.130.180.210.210.28

ImportanceIndexO.ll0.100.090.040.110.040.050.020.030.020.090.020.080.030.010.100.120.020.050.050.020.010.130.020.010.02O.ll0.010.090.080.11O.IO0.060.050.200.090.060.110.060.050.100.110.040.05


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Ranking Economics Departments by fields 993Table 4. Cont inuedSchoolU Maryland, College Park

CategoryRanking SSC20

JEL category P: Economic systemsUC BerkeleyHarvard UColumbia UU Maryland, College ParkU MichiganArizona State UU PittsburghUC DavisU ChicagoStanford LJBrown UPrinceton UM ITCity U of New York (CUNY)Western Michigan UU Southern CaliforniaBrandeis UUC IrvineYale UU Illinois, Urbana

1234567891011121314151617181920

Number ofPublishing Faculty957926

' 2 4233S4;3151, 52

JEL category Q : Agricultural and natural resource economicsIowa State UNorth Carolina State UU WyomingHarvard UYale UUC Santa BarbaraM ITU Rhode IslandGeorgetown USUNY BinghamtonStanford UU Colorado. BoulderUtah State URPIU ConnecticutUC San DiegoRutgers UBrown UU Wisconsin, MadisonGeargia State U

134367S910

11121314151617181920

29249667783497143361665

JEL category R: Urban rural and regional economicsU Illinois, Chicago 1 5

H H I0.24O MOM0 . ^0.920.340440.S61,000.870.280.960.070.120.270.390.390.320.210,240.950,340.300.220.150.540,650.301.000.220.310.290.42

Impo nanceIndex0.060.030.020.040.060.030.07O.IO0.040.020.020.040.010.010.040.200.020.120.060.010.020.360.340.350.020.040.140.020.760.080.220.030.080.560.210.140.030.090.040.030.070.21


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994 Therese C rijalvaand Clifford NowellTable 4. ContinuedSchoolUC BerkeleyFlorida Slate UGeorgia State UWayne State UPrinceton UUC San DiegoU ConneeticutU Illinois., UrbanaU Colorado, BoulderSUNY BuffaloUC RiversideU KentuckyPennsylvania State UOklahoma State UWashington U, St. Louis

CategoryRanking SSCI67891011121314151617

181920

Number ofPublishing Faculty

6118278558255233

HHI0.500.430.520.600.380.230.390.330.180.940.480.290.800.450.51

ImportanceIndex0.020.150.130.290.020.040.180.050.090.250.120.130.060.350.13

JEL subject code I (health, education, and welfare), Stanford University has nine facultymembers who have published in this area and an HHI of 0.63. Michigan State University isranked slightly lower than Stanford and has 10 faculty publishing in the area with an HHI of0.16. If a student wishes to pursue a graduate degree in economics at Stanford University withan emphasis in health, education, and welfare, he or she should realize that the scholarlyactivity in this area at Stanford is concentrated in a few of the nine people who publish in thearea, while at Michigan State University, the publications are more evenly distributed acrossthe faculty in this area.

The fifth column in Table 4, Imp ortance Index , dem onstrates the importance of aparticular field for a department relative to its overall productivity. The importance indexsimply divides a department's productivity score for a particular field by the department'soverall productivity score. Refer to Princeton University, which ranks as the top department inJEL subject codes B and F , methodo logy and history of econom ic thoug ht a nd internation aleconomics, respectively. For methodology and history of economic thought, Princeton has animportance index of 2%, and for intemational economics, Princeton has an importance indexof 12%. This indicates that methodology and history of economic tho ugh t is more likely aspillover category and not the primary focus of the department's overall research agenda.

4. ConclusionThe primary objective of this article is to provide information to undergraduate students

and to their advisers on the research strengths of 129 econom ics doc toral p rogr am s in theUnited States. We provide both total and average, or per capita, research productivitymeasures for publishing faculty and identify schools that are highly ranked in the many


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Ranking Economics Departments hy Fields 995productivity measures result in differences in quality rankings, where total productivity isinfluenced by both the number of publishing faculty and the productivity of each facultymember. Students searching for graduate schools may benefit from considering both theaverage quality of the faculty and the total quahty of the department.

For students who have a strong interest in a specific subject field of economics, we identifylhe schools that may best fit with the student's desires. As a cautionary note, we provide HHImeasures that alert students to the possibility that some departments may have a top reputationin a subject field due to having a single, very influential faculty member.

Although this information should be helpful to students applying to graduate school,applicants should be mindful of several things. First, one should apply to m any different Ph .D .programs. The loss from a redundant application is much smaller than the loss of not applyingto a place that could become one's best offer (or maybe help to get a better deal elsewhere).Second, although a student will benefit by attending a university ranked highly in his or herpreferred field, a major consideration should still be the overall quality of the department.There are several benefits of attending a highly ranked school: (i) a student often learns a lotfrom his or her classmates, who perhaps are better students; (ii) students may change theirpreferences during their studies, and our study shows that highly ranked departments overallare strong in many fields; and (iii) students may be more successful in their job search if theygraduated from a department that is highly ranked overall. While this article can be a usefultool to start with, when actually choosing between competing offers, prospective studentsshould check out department websites and relevant curricula vital themselves.'^

Finally, our work shows that many top-ranked programs based on total productivitymeasures are able to provide an education that is broad in nature and that gives access to manyof the subject fields of economics. For students who are interested in a specific subject field,attending a traditionally top-ranked program will likely not limit the student's ability toconduct future research in an applied discipline. At the same time, however, for students whowill not atten d a to p-ran ked school based on total prod uctivity measures, they will likely attenda program with actively publishing faculty, and if they choose their programs correctly, it willstill be possible to obtain a top-ranked education in one of the subfields of economics.

ReferencesBarbezat. Debra A. 1992, The markei for new Ph.D. economists.Journal of conomic Education23:262-76.Dusansky, Richard, and Clayton J. Vemon. 1998. Rankings of U.S. economics departments. Journal of Economic

Perspectives 12:157-70.Graves, Philip E., James R. Marchand, and Randel Thompson. 1982. Economics departmental ratikings: Research

incentives, constraints, and efficiency. American Economic Review 5:1131-41.Journal of conomicLiterature. 1991, Classification system: Oid and new categories. Journal of conomic Literature

29:xviii-xxviii,Laband. David N.. and Michael J. Piette. 1994. The relative impacts of economics journals: 1970-1990. Journal of

conomic Literature32:640-66.McMillen, Daniel P., and Larry D. Singell, Jr. 1994- Gender differences in first jobs for economists. Southern EconomicJournal 6Q J0l \4.


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996 Therese C Grijaha and Clifford Now ellStock Wendy and R ichard M . Alston. 2000. The effect of graduate program rank on success in the job m arket. Journai

of conomic Education 31:389-401.Thursby. Jerry G. 2000. What do we say about ourselves and what does it mean? Yet another look at economics

department research.Jou rnal of conomic Literature38:383-404.Tschirhart John. 1989. Ranking economics departmen ts in areas of expertise. Journal of Econom ic Education

20:199-222.


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grijalva-nowell - phd economic program rankings.pdf

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