The Determinants of the Reputations of Economics Departments: Pages Published, Citations and the Andy Rooney Effect

This paper analyzes the determinants of the ratings and rankings of Economics departments generated in a recent reputational study by the National Research Council. A department's reputation increases with the number of article pages published and the citation rate for its faculty's publications. A page in a "top five" journal is worth more than a page published in other journals. There are diminishing returns to pages published and to citations. The National Research Council ratings for private institutions are biased upwards and those for southern schools are biased downwards. A revised set of rankings with these biases removed is constructed. The optimum publication strategy for a department depends on the distribution of pages published between "top five" and other journals. Economists judged departments more harshly than faculty in other disciplines.