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Top US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, as of August 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 9358 institutions with 74012 registered authors evaluated for all the rankings
  • For US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, these are 112 institutions with 573.51 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)13430.28
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)3.192624.37
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)4.962322.90
6Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States)5.702120.83
7Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States)6.471817.50
8Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States)6.942020
9Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States)9.4876.95
10Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States)10.9098.25
11Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States)10.941715.25
12Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States)11.001715.80
13Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States)11.151716.25
14Bowdoin College → Department of Economics, Brunswick, Maine (United States)11.941212
15Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States)13.811414
16College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States)13.861717
17Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States)14.921211.50
18Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States)16.211110.80
19Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States)18.891411.50
20Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States)18.9087.50
21Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States)19.881010
22Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States)22.2188
23United States Naval Academy → Economics Department, Annapolis, Maryland (United States)23.00119.91
24Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States)23.16109.70
25Bucknell University → Economics Department, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (United States)23.3788
26Trinity College → Department of Economics, Hartford, Connecticut (United States)23.7077
27United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States)24.041312.47
28Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States)26.2165.11

10 best authors in each, 10 last publication years

Rank Institution Score Authors Author
Shares
1Williams College → Economics Department, Williamstown, Massachusetts (United States)1.213410
2Wellesley College → Department of Economics, Wellesley, Massachusetts (United States)1.852210
3Middlebury College → Department of Economics, Middlebury, Vermont (United States)2.702110
4University of Richmond → Robins School of Business → Economics Department, Richmond, Virginia (United States)3.312310
5Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States)4.571810
6Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States)6.092110
7United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States)6.821310
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)6.961210
10Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States)9.311010
11Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States)11.341110
12Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States)11.471710
13Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States)13.221410
14Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States)13.322010
15Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States)16.301710
16Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States)16.3776.95
17Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States)16.811710
18Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States)16.891210
19Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States)16.9598.25
20Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States)18.161410
21Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States)18.48109.70
22Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States)20.0988
23Johnson C. Smith University → Department of Business Administration and Economics, Charlotte, North Carolina (United States)20.1911
24College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States)20.891710
25Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States)25.3887.50
26Grinnell College → Department of Economics, Grinnell, Iowa (United States)25.3933
27Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States)26.6865.11
28St. Lawrence University → Economics Department, Canton, New York (United States)28.4498.70
Credits:
We do our best, but we cannot exclude errors.
IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.