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Top Institutions and Economists in the Field of Microfinance, as of September 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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  • The scores of institutions in each field are determined by a weighted sum of all scores of authors affiliated with the respective institutions, where the authors have provided weights ("shares") if they have multiple affiliations. The weights are determined, for each author, by the proportion of all working papers announced in NEP that have also been announced in this NEP report.
  • To be classified, an author needs to have five or more working papers announced in the NEP report for this field. For authors whose first paper is less that 10 years old, having 25% of the papers in the NEP report is sufficient.
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  • 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.
  • 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
  • For institutions: 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 9374 institutions with 74391 registered authors evaluated for all the rankings
  • For Microfinance, these are 296 institutions and 253 authors.

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
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InstitutionsShort Details Short Details Short Details Short Details All yearsLast 10 More
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Top Institutions

Rank Institution Score Authors Author
Shares
1World Bank Group, Washington, District of Columbia (United States)1123.01
-World Bank Group → Economics Research, Washington, District of Columbia (United States)2.0071.91
2Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) → Economics Department, Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States)2.1340.35
3Hoover Institution on War Revolution & Peace, Stanford, California (United States)3.5710.12
4Northwestern University → Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Evanston, Illinois (United States)4.1710.34
5European University Institute → Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), Firenze, Italy4.3210.25
6Dartmouth College → Economics Department, Hanover, New Hampshire (United States)6.0921.17
7University of South Carolina → Darla Moore School of Business, Columbia, South Carolina (United States)7.4810.17
8Boston University → Department of Economics, Boston, Massachusetts (United States)7.6820.32
9Oxford University → Department of International Development (Queen Elizabeth House), Oxford, United Kingdom8.3721.43
10New York University (NYU) → Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York City, New York (United States)9.5310.52
11Northwestern University → Department of Economics, Evanston, Illinois (United States)10.7120.40
12Imperial College → Business School, London, United Kingdom11.5820.21
13Stanford University → Graduate School of Business, Stanford, California (United States)14.4310.24
14Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), New Haven, Connecticut (United States)14.5140.23
-Boston University → Department of Economics → Institute for Economic Development, Boston, Massachusetts (United States)15.2510.21
15University of Washington → Michael G. Foster School of Business, Seattle, Washington (United States)15.4710.24
16International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, District of Columbia (United States)15.4841.14
17Indiana University → Kelley School of Business, Bloomington, Indiana (United States)17.1710.18
18National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States)17.8990.25
-Indiana University → Kelley School of Business → Department of Finance, Bloomington, Indiana (United States)18.8610.18
19University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) → Economics Department, Santa Cruz, California (United States)21.0310.31
-Universitetet i Agder → Handelshøyskolen → Institutt for økonomi, Kristiansand, Norway21.5110.88
19Universitetet i Agder → Handelshøyskolen, Kristiansand, Norway21.5110.88
21University of Peradeniya → Department of Economics and Statistics, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka21.7310.90
22Princeton University → Department of Economics, Princeton, New Jersey (United States)21.9410.18
23London School of Economics (LSE), London, United Kingdom22.3120.19
-London School of Economics (LSE) → Economics Department, London, United Kingdom23.3210.19
24Oxford University → Department of Economics, Oxford, United Kingdom23.6330.74
25University of Hawaii-Manoa → Department of Economics, Manoa, Hawaii (United States)24.7410.22
-Université de Namur → Faculté Économie, Management, Communication, Sciences Po → Centre de Recherche en Économie de Développement (CRED), Namur, Belgium25.2510.31
25Université de Namur → Faculté Économie, Management, Communication, Sciences Po, Namur, Belgium25.2510.31
27Cornell University → College of Agriculture and Life Sciences → Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Ithaca, New York (United States)25.3720.33
-Oxford University → Department of Economics → Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE), Oxford, United Kingdom28.8430.43
28University of Chicago → Department of Economics, Chicago, Illinois (United States)29.0610.07
29Harvard University → Harvard Business School, Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States)30.3810.35

Top Authors

Rank Author Score
1Dean Karlan
Northwestern University → Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Evanston, Illinois (United States)
1.50
2Thorsten Beck
European University Institute → Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), Firenze, Italy
3.45
3Jonathan Zinman
Dartmouth College → Economics Department, Hanover, New Hampshire (United States)
4.26
4Ross Levine
Hoover Institution on War Revolution & Peace, Stanford, California (United States)
4.28
5Charles M. C. Lee
Stanford University → Graduate School of Business, Stanford, California (United States)
University of Washington → Michael G. Foster School of Business, Seattle, Washington (United States)
5.35
6Jonathan Morduch
New York University (NYU) → Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York City, New York (United States)
5.45
7Christopher Woodruff
Oxford University → Department of International Development (Queen Elizabeth House), Oxford, United Kingdom
7.50
8David Mckenzie
World Bank Group → Economics Research, Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
8.29
9Asli Demirguc-Kunt
World Bank Group, Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
8.71
10Allen N. Berger
University of South Carolina → Darla Moore School of Business, Columbia, South Carolina (United States)
11.00
11Dilip Mookherjee
Boston University → Department of Economics → Institute for Economic Development, Boston, Massachusetts (United States)
12.15
12Christopher Udry
Northwestern University → Department of Economics, Evanston, Illinois (United States)
12.50
13Roy Mersland
Universitetet i Agder → Handelshøyskolen → Institutt for økonomi, Kristiansand, Norway
13.03
14Xavier Gine
World Bank Group → Economics Research, Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
13.97
15Esther Duflo
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) → Economics Department, Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States)
14.11
16Abhijit Banerjee
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) → Economics Department, Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States)
14.73
17Franklin Allen
Imperial College → Business School, London, United Kingdom
16.39
18Sendhil Mullainathan
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) → Economics Department, Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States)
17.31
19Robert Cull
World Bank Group → Economics Research, Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
18.20
20Shahidur Rahman Khandker
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
18.24
21Robert M. Townsend
University of Chicago → Department of Economics, Chicago, Illinois (United States)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) → Economics Department, Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States)
19.55
22Gregory Udell
Indiana University → Kelley School of Business → Department of Finance, Bloomington, Indiana (United States)
24.67
23Leora F. Klapper
World Bank Group → Economics Research, Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
24.98
24Raymond Fisman
Boston University → Department of Economics, Boston, Massachusetts (United States)
25.87
25Pascaline Dupas
Princeton University → Department of Economics, Princeton, New Jersey (United States)
26.19
Credits:
We do our best, but we cannot exclude errors.
IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.