Content area
Full text
What is certain is that econometrics now occupies a position in teaching programs that puts it on an equal footing with microeconomic and macroeconomic theory; and in research there seems to be no area of economics untouched by econometric method. To keep abreast of these changes, we intend to provide regular updates of the rankings of research activity presented in this issue of Econometric Theory .
--Peter C.B. Phillips (1987, Econometric Theory 3, 169)
1. INTRODUCTION
In 1985, Peter C.B. Phillips, the editor of Econometric Theory (ET ), commissioned a worldwide ranking of research activity in econometrics that was the first of its kind; see Hall (1987). More than 21 years later, we have witnessed four updates (counting this study) of the original Hall ranking paper published in ET . These updates are given in Hall (1990) and Baltagi (1998, 2003). These econometrics rankings have attracted a lot of attention, praise, criticism, and controversy. They have been posted on the ET Web site, http://korora.econ.yale.edu/et/, and used by departments and deans to evaluate faculty and econometrics programs. Ranking studies in the field of economics have been a thriving industry and include classic articles such as Graves, Marchand, and Thompson (1982), Hirsch, Austin, Brooks, and Moore (1984), Conroy, Dusansky, Drukker, and Kildegaard (1995), Scott and Mitias (1996), and Dusansky and Vernon (1998), to mention a few. More recently, a special issue of the Journal of the European Economic Association published six papers based on a symposium of EEA-funded studies to evaluate economic research in Europe; see Neary, Mirlees, and Tirole (2003, p. 1240). "The Council of the EEA took the view that it was very desirable to encourage more studies of this kind, given the poor governance structures and inappropriate incentives that still characterize so many European universities. The results should help all those attempting to evaluate and develop research capacity, including officials in charge of overseeing and funding universities, and university officers trying to assess the quality of their economics department." Economics rankings have also been done by region and country; see Lucas (1995) for Canada, Smyth and Smyth (2001) for the United Kingdom, Dolado, Romero, and Zamarro (2003) for Spain, Combes and Linnemer (2001) for France, Bairam (1996) and King (2001) for New...