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Top US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, as of April 2026

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This page is part of a larger set of rankings for research items, serials, authors and institutions made available on this site. A FAQ is available.

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  • Institutions need satisfy the following criteria to be included: Institutions having the following words in its name or its name translation on EDIRC:
  • A series of rankings by different criteria are aggregated. The average rank score is determined by taking a harmonic mean of the ranks in each criterion. For a list of criteria, see the general ranking page.
  • For 10/10: This ranking takes only publications in the last 10 years into account.
  • For 10/10: The ranking here is limited to the best 10 authors from each institution for each criterion. Authors with multiple affiliations count proportionally to the affiliation share they set for the score and the author count. Rankings for criteria HIndex and Students are from the general ranking.
  • Authors who are deceased or whose email address with RePEc is invalid are not counted, the latter under the assumption that they have moved or have died
  • There are 9298 institutions with 73371 registered authors evaluated for all the rankings
  • For US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, these are 112 institutions with 562.25 members.

The data presented here are experimental. They are based on a sample of the research output in Economics and Finance. Only material catalogued in RePEc is considered. For any citation based criterion, only works that could be parsed by the CitEc project are considered. For any ranking of people, only those registered with the RePEc Author Service can be taken into account. And for rankings of institutions, only those listed in EDIRC and claimed as affiliation by the respective, registered authors can be measured. Thus, this list is by no means based on a complete sample. You can help making this more comprehensive by encouraging more publications to be listed (instructions) and more authors to register (form). For more details on the various rankings that are available as well for documentation, follow this link.

EntityFull rankingLast 10 years10 best authorsLast 10 years, 10 best authorsTop 5% authorsMore
AuthorsShort Details Short Details More
InstitutionsShort Details Short Details Short Details Short Details All yearsLast 10 More
RegionsShort Details Short Details More

All publications, all authors

Rank Institution Score Authors Author
Shares
1Williams College → Economics Department, Williamstown, Massachusetts (United States)13228.61
2Wellesley College → Department of Economics, Wellesley, Massachusetts (United States)2.002119.25
3Claremont McKenna College → Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont, California (United States)3.192624.37
4Middlebury College → Department of Economics, Middlebury, Vermont (United States)3.852120.40
5University of Richmond → Robins School of Business → Economics Department, Richmond, Virginia (United States)4.842322.90
5Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States)5.672221.83
6Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States)6.491817.50
7Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States)7.051919
8Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States)9.3976.95
9Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States)10.4998.25
10Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States)10.701715.80
11Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States)10.851715.25
12Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States)10.971716.25
13Bowdoin College → Department of Economics, Brunswick, Maine (United States)12.951111
14College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States)13.761717
15Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States)13.911313
16Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States)14.711211.50
17Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States)16.29109.80
18Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States)18.4187.50
19Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States)18.751411.50
20Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States)19.841010
21Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States)22.6277
22Trinity College → Department of Economics, Hartford, Connecticut (United States)22.7677
23Bucknell University → Economics Department, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (United States)22.7888
24United States Naval Academy → Economics Department, Annapolis, Maryland (United States)22.99119.91
25Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States)23.33109.70
26United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States)24.641312.47
27Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States)26.2165.11
28Colorado College → Department of Economics and Business, Colorado Springs, Colorado (United States)27.9476.50

10 best authors in each, 10 last publication years

Rank Institution Score Authors Author
Shares
1Williams College → Economics Department, Williamstown, Massachusetts (United States)1.173210
2Wellesley College → Department of Economics, Wellesley, Massachusetts (United States)2.012110
3Middlebury College → Department of Economics, Middlebury, Vermont (United States)2.702110
4University of Richmond → Robins School of Business → Economics Department, Richmond, Virginia (United States)2.812310
4Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States)4.621810
5Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States)5.742210
6United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States)6.511310
7Claremont McKenna College → Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont, California (United States)6.702610
8Bowdoin College → Department of Economics, Brunswick, Maine (United States)8.531110
9Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States)9.341010
10Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States)11.081710
11Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States)11.76109.80
12Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States)13.721910
13Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States)14.051310
14Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States)15.451710
15Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States)15.6276.95
16Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States)16.121710
17Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States)16.6198.25
18Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States)17.59109.70
19Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States)17.651410
20Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States)17.681210
21College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States)20.161710
22Johnson C. Smith University → Department of Business Administration and Economics, Charlotte, North Carolina (United States)20.5711
23Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States)22.3677
24Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States)24.6487.50
25Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States)25.9065.11
26Grinnell College → Department of Economics, Grinnell, Iowa (United States)26.5722
27St. Lawrence University → Economics Department, Canton, New York (United States)27.29109.70
28United States Naval Academy → Economics Department, Annapolis, Maryland (United States)27.91119.91
Credits:
We do our best, but we cannot exclude errors.
IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.