How Does the Department Rank?

• The Department of Economics at JHU ranked 4th - The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Johns Hopkins is ranked #15 and, on a per faculty member basis, #7. - Journal of Economic Perspectives study.
• "Top Academic Economists" - The American Economist

In the 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education ranking, our department is ranked #4. This ranking is based on the 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index. One reason that our department does so well in this survey, relative to other surveys, is that the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index considers research output (as measured by publications and citations) per faculty member, rather than as gross output. We feel that such a high ranking reflects accurately the high level of research activity and productivity of each faculty member in the department. In contrast, rankings based on gross output understate the research engagement of this department, due to our small size.
This high ranking in the Chronicle of Higher Education survey also culminates a decade-long turnaround in our department's fortunes. In the 1950s, our department was a top ten department. Its faculty included Evsey Domar, Simon Kuznets (who later won a Nobel prize), and Fritz Machlup and produced such stars as Nobel-prize winners Merton Miller (PhD '53) and Robert Fogel (PhD '63). Amazingly, our department was comprised of only seven faculty members. Jumping forward to the 1980s, most rankings placed our department around #20 (for example, 1983 Chronicle of Higher Education ranking placed Hopkins at #20 in terms of Faculty Quality).
However, starting in the early 1990's, a number of high-profile researchers joined our department, including Robert Moffitt from Brown University, Larry Ball from Princeton University, Mark Gersovitz from the University of Michigan, Peyton Young from the University of Maryland, and Chris Carroll from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. As a result of these hires and the other members of the faculty, our department is now the strongest it has been since the 1950s, as evidenced by our leap in the 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education ranking.

Other rankings:

JEP Ranking - In the "Rankings of U.S. Economic Departments" published in the Winter 1998 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, our department was ranking #15 overall. On the basis of the number of pages published in top journals per faculty member as of the fall of 1995, which includes most but not all of our recent senior hires, we were ranked #7. (On the basis of the total pages published by all faculty members, our department is ranked #26 because of its below average size.)

The U.S. News and World Report Ranking places Hopkins at #24. Unlike the other rankings discussed above, this ranking is not based mainly on faculty research activity.

Domar
(1948-1958)

Kuznets
(1954-1960)

Machlup
(1948-1960)

Miller
(Ph.D. '53)

Fogel
(Ph.D. '63)

Richard T. Ely

(1881-1892)