Econometric Institutions

Attempts at measuring research output are often contentious. Instead of deriving our own measure index, this page simply reports the approach of Jack Towe and Don Wright of Sydney University in their recent paper:

"Research published by Australian Economics and Econometrics Departments: 1988-93",
Economic Record, vol 71, pages 8-17, March 1995

An earlier version is available as a University of Sydney, Department of Economics Working Paper, # 208. Towe and Wright classified journals into several quality groupings. Group 1 covered their top 12 journals, while Group 2 covered the next 23 'top' journals. These are listed below. Towe and Wright then obtained staff lists for each institution. By using the JEL CD-Rom database, they were able to calculate the total number of pages written by each staff member over the period 1988-1993 in each category. Page counts were standardised by the number of characters on one page of the American Economic Review. The end product is a vintage 1994 stock measure of quality. To provide a constant relative measure, we have scaled their results so that Sydney is always equal to 1.


Group 1 results

Group 1 covered the 'top 12' journals:

American Economic Review, Econonetrica, Economic Journal, International Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Rand Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, and Review of Economic Studies

Here is the ranking for econometric institutions:


The results for ANU relate only to the ANU teaching department; if their research school was included, ANU would most likely do much better. From the perspective of quality, Australian econometric departments are far more centralised than their counterparts in economics. As such, the problem of sensitivity is less severe here. Nevertheless, we still present the results for Group 1 and Group 2 together. This time, the orderings are invariant to this change (see below).


Group 1 and 2 results

Group 1 and 2 covered the 'top 35' journals:

Group 1 + AER Papers and Proceedings, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, Economica, Economic Letters, European Economic Review, Journal of American Statistical Association, Journal of Business, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Labour Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Oxford Economic Papers, Scandinavian Journal of Economics

Here is the ranking for econometric institutions:

webmaster@tri.org.au