Rabah Amir (University of Arizona, Eller College of Management) & Malgorzata Knauff (Warsaw School of Economics) have published Ranking Economics Departments Worldwide on the Basis of PhD Placement (2005). Here is the abstract:
An objective ranking of economics departments worldwide in terms of graduate education is derived. The central idea is that the value of a department is the sum of the values of its PhD graduates, as reflected in the values of their current employing departments. The scores are thus derived as solutions to a linear system of simultaneous equations in the values. The sample includes the top fifty-four departments, the composition of which is determined endogenously using a criterion requiring a minimum of four placements in the departments comprising the sample. Two other related rankings are proposed, which place more emphasis on more recent faculty recruitments. The results point to a very high concentration in the economics PhD education market worldwide, confirming the dominance of the top U.S. departments, in particular of Harvard and M.I.T. Nevertheless, a modest de-concentration trend is under way. The rankings are in close agreement with the 1994 National Research Council survey ranking based on the perceived quality of PhD programs.
(Hat Tip: Paul Caron)The Top 10 economics departments by this measure are:
1. Harvard
2. MIT
3. Stanford
4. Princeton
5. Chicago
6. Cal-Berkeley
7. Yale
8. Northwestern
9. Oxford
10. London School of Economics
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it makes me wonder why we austrians have to worry about this things!!!!!
I don’t think Austrians have to “worry” about rankings such as this, but it is interesting to see how society ranks economics programs — particularly the methodology that these “rankers” used in this study.
If people take these “rankings” seriously we should worry.
The value of an Economics department is in the understanding of Economics it helps the students develop, not in the jobs in other Economics departments that the students get.
Of course many Economics departments do not help with the understanding of Economics at all – indeed the students (inclding the Ph.D students) leave with less understanding of Economics than they arrived with (even if they arrived with none at all).
So by using a similar methodology, I have determined that McDonald’s makes the best food on Earth!
Ppl like you get all the brains. I just get to say tahskn for he answer.
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