UO economics department ranked among world’s elite for research impact

EUGENE, Ore.—(May 2007)— The University of Oregon’s economics department boasts just 20 professors but it stands tall. The most recent rankings by Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), an organization of volunteers from 58 countries, has the UO department ranked 13th for its impact through working papers and journal articles among public U.S. universities.

The ranking places the UO department of economics in the top 5 percent of economics research organizations in the world. The ranking for “Recursive Impact Factors for (Working Paper) Series and Journals” weights citations to working papers and other published work by an impact factor that is based objectively on a measure of importance or prominence.

RePEc is an international collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers whose goal is enhance the distribution of research findings in the field of economics. Member institutions, including those from 35 U.S. states, submit their materials into a decentralized database of working papers, journal articles and software components. The RePEc database, which holds more than 480,000 items, is sponsored by the University of Connecticut’s economics department.

The ranking for the UO economics department is particularly noteworthy, because the department is the smallest of the top 15 listed in the 2007 report, said Larry D. Singell, professor and department head. Most of the departments in the rankings have 35-50 faculty members. The department’s success, Singell noted, can be attributed to an extraordinary degree of faculty collaboration and commitment within the unit and to its concentrations in macroeconomics, international and development economics, and applied microeconomics.

“These research strengths in the department are also reflected in its instructional program, where majors have more than doubled over the last decade,” he said.

The RePEc’s Top 15 were, in order: the University of California, Los Angeles; UC, Berkeley; University of Michigan; University of Wisconsin; Rutgers University; UC, Santa Cruz; University of Iowa; University of Maryland; UC, Davis; University of Washington; UC, Santa Barbara; Ohio State University; University of Oregon, University of Houston and University of Texas.

Contact: Jim Barlow, 541-346-3481, jebarlow@uoregon.edu