Methodology

Ranking Methods

Formal definitions of the scholar-ranking rules used throughout this site.

Index Definition
Existing indices
h-index The largest h such that h papers have at least h citations each
i10-index The number of papers with at least 10 citations
Euclidean index \(\sqrt{\sum_i x_i^2}\), where $x_i$ is the number of citations of paper $i$
Total Citation Total number of citations
Total Publication Total number of publications
Bean-Counting (BC) family
ABC Absolute Bean Counting \( \#\{\text{Top Five}\} \)
ABC_A Absolute Bean Counting \( \#\{\text{Top Five or Top A}\} \)
DBC Discounted Bean Counting \(\#\{\text{Top Five}\} + 0.5 \times \#\{\text{outside Top Five}\}\)
CRBC Citation-Restricted Bean Counting \(\#\{\text{Top Five and with at least 10 citations}\}\)
CEBC Citation-Expanded Bean Counting \(\#\{\text{Top Five or with at least 10 citations}\}\)
TCEBC Tiered Citation-Expanded Bean Counting $\#\{\text{Top Five}\} + 0.5 \times \#\{\text{Top A}\} + 0.5 \times \#\{\text{non-Top-Five/Top-A and with at least 10 citations}\}$
CES family
ACES Asymmetric CES \(\left(\sum_{\text{Top Five}} \sqrt{x_i}\right)^2 + 0.5 \times \sqrt{\sum_{\text{non-Top-Five}} x_i^2}\), where $x_i$ is the number of citations of paper $i$
ABC + CES \(\#\{\text{Top Five}\} + \sqrt{\sum_{\text{non-Top-Five}} x_i^2}\), where $x_i$ is the number of citations of paper $i$
ABC × CES \(\left(1+\#\{\text{Top Five}\}\right) \times \left(1+\sqrt{\sum_{\text{non-Top-Five}} x_i^2}\right)\), where $x_i$ is the number of citations of paper $i$
Definition

Journal Lists

The ranking methods use journal lists based on Heckman and Moktan (2020).

Top Five

  • American Economic Review
  • Econometrica
  • Journal of Political Economy
  • Quarterly Journal of Economics
  • Review of Economic Studies

Top A

Non-Top-Five general-interest journals:

  • Review of Economics and Statistics
  • Economic Journal
  • Journal of the European Economic Association
  • European Economic Review
  • International Economic Review

Leading field journals:

  • Journal of Development Economics
  • Journal of Econometrics
  • Journal of Business and Economic Statistics
  • Journal of Economic Growth
  • Journal of Financial Economics
  • Journal of Finance
  • Journal of Economic Theory
  • Games and Economic Behavior
  • Journal of Health Economics
  • Health Economics
  • RAND Journal of Economics
  • Journal of Industrial Economics
  • Journal of Labor Economics
  • Journal of Human Resources
  • Journal of Monetary Economics
  • Journal of Money, Credit and Banking
  • Journal of Public Economics
  • Public Choice
Label

Field Classification

Paper-level field classification and scholar-level primary-field assignment.

We classify publications into 13 economics fields, plus an “Other” category, using a Large Language Model based on each paper's title, keywords, and abstract. Each paper is assigned to the field with the highest predicted probability.

A scholar's primary field is the field with the largest share of their publications. Scholars whose primary field accounts for at least 50% of their publications are treated as single-field scholars, and their primary field is displayed. Scholars whose primary field accounts for less than 50% are labeled as multi-field.