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Top US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, as of July 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 9347 institutions with 73835 registered authors evaluated for all the rankings
  • For US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, these are 112 institutions with 570.34 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)13329.61
2Wellesley College → Department of Economics, Wellesley, Massachusetts (United States)2.002220.25
3Claremont McKenna College → Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont, California (United States)3.232624.37
4Middlebury College → Department of Economics, Middlebury, Vermont (United States)3.812120.40
5University of Richmond → Robins School of Business → Economics Department, Richmond, Virginia (United States)4.922322.90
6Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States)5.672120.83
7Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States)6.491817.50
8Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States)7.042020
9Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States)9.6276.95
10Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States)10.6998.25
11Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States)10.701715.80
12Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States)10.951715.25
13Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States)11.101716.25
14Bowdoin College → Department of Economics, Brunswick, Maine (United States)11.961212
15College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States)13.731717
16Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States)13.901414
17Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States)15.161211.50
18Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States)16.58109.80
19Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States)18.6187.50
20Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States)18.811411.50
21Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States)19.841010
22Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States)22.3188
23United States Naval Academy → Economics Department, Annapolis, Maryland (United States)22.88119.91
24Bucknell University → Economics Department, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (United States)23.1688
25Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States)23.37109.70
26Trinity College → Department of Economics, Hartford, Connecticut (United States)23.6877
27United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States)24.951312.47
28Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States)26.3265.11

10 best authors in each, 10 last publication years

Rank Institution Score Authors Author
Shares
1Williams College → Economics Department, Williamstown, Massachusetts (United States)1.243310
2Wellesley College → Department of Economics, Wellesley, Massachusetts (United States)1.822210
3Middlebury College → Department of Economics, Middlebury, Vermont (United States)2.702110
4University of Richmond → Robins School of Business → Economics Department, Richmond, Virginia (United States)3.472310
5Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States)4.621810
6Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States)5.982110
7United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States)6.901310
8Claremont McKenna College → Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont, California (United States)6.932610
9Bowdoin College → Department of Economics, Brunswick, Maine (United States)7.051210
10Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States)9.281010
11Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States)11.361710
12Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States)12.09109.80
13Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States)13.262010
14Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States)13.301410
15Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States)16.011710
16Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States)16.021710
17Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States)16.4776.95
18Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States)16.9698.25
19Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States)17.191210
20Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States)17.831410
21Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States)18.46109.70
22Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States)20.3088
23College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States)20.351710
24Johnson C. Smith University → Department of Business Administration and Economics, Charlotte, North Carolina (United States)20.9811
25Grinnell College → Department of Economics, Grinnell, Iowa (United States)25.4633
26Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States)25.4887.50
27Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States)26.6365.11
28St. Lawrence University → Economics Department, Canton, New York (United States)28.3798.70
Credits:
We do our best, but we cannot exclude errors.
IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.