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Top US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, as of September 2026
What this page is about
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.
- Customize this ranking.
- 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 9374 institutions with 74391 registered authors evaluated for all the rankings
- For US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges, these are 112 institutions with 574.51 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.
All publications, all authors
| Rank | Institution | Score | Authors | Author Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Williams College → Economics Department, Williamstown, Massachusetts (United States) | 1 | 34 | 30.28 |
| 2 | Wellesley College → Department of Economics, Wellesley, Massachusetts (United States) | 2.00 | 22 | 20.25 |
| 3 | Claremont McKenna College → Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont, California (United States) | 3.19 | 26 | 24.37 |
| 4 | Middlebury College → Department of Economics, Middlebury, Vermont (United States) | 3.85 | 21 | 20.40 |
| 5 | University of Richmond → Robins School of Business → Economics Department, Richmond, Virginia (United States) | 4.86 | 23 | 22.90 |
| 6 | Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States) | 5.77 | 21 | 20.83 |
| 7 | Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States) | 6.27 | 18 | 17.50 |
| 8 | Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States) | 7.14 | 20 | 20 |
| 9 | Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States) | 9.52 | 7 | 6.95 |
| 10 | Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States) | 10.49 | 9 | 8.25 |
| 11 | Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States) | 10.97 | 17 | 15.80 |
| 12 | Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States) | 11.07 | 17 | 15.25 |
| 13 | Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States) | 11.22 | 17 | 16.25 |
| 14 | Bowdoin College → Department of Economics, Brunswick, Maine (United States) | 12.01 | 12 | 12 |
| 15 | Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States) | 13.82 | 14 | 14 |
| 16 | College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States) | 13.84 | 17 | 17 |
| 17 | Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States) | 15.04 | 12 | 11.50 |
| 18 | Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States) | 16.22 | 12 | 11.80 |
| 19 | Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States) | 18.86 | 14 | 11.50 |
| 20 | Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States) | 19.03 | 8 | 7.50 |
| 21 | Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States) | 19.71 | 10 | 10 |
| 22 | Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States) | 22.31 | 8 | 8 |
| 23 | United States Naval Academy → Economics Department, Annapolis, Maryland (United States) | 23.03 | 11 | 9.91 |
| 24 | Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States) | 23.03 | 10 | 9.70 |
| 25 | Bucknell University → Economics Department, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (United States) | 23.05 | 8 | 8 |
| 26 | Trinity College → Department of Economics, Hartford, Connecticut (United States) | 23.72 | 7 | 7 |
| 27 | United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States) | 24.53 | 13 | 12.47 |
| 28 | Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States) | 26.55 | 6 | 5.11 |
10 best authors in each, 10 last publication years
| Rank | Institution | Score | Authors | Author Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Williams College → Economics Department, Williamstown, Massachusetts (United States) | 1.27 | 34 | 10 |
| 2 | Wellesley College → Department of Economics, Wellesley, Massachusetts (United States) | 1.74 | 22 | 10 |
| 3 | Middlebury College → Department of Economics, Middlebury, Vermont (United States) | 2.75 | 21 | 10 |
| 4 | University of Richmond → Robins School of Business → Economics Department, Richmond, Virginia (United States) | 3.43 | 23 | 10 |
| 5 | Amherst College → Economics Department, Amherst, Massachusetts (United States) | 4.57 | 18 | 10 |
| 6 | Colgate University → Department of Economics, Hamilton, New York (United States) | 6.11 | 21 | 10 |
| 7 | United States Military Academy → Department of Social Sciences, West Point, New York (United States) | 6.71 | 13 | 10 |
| 8 | Bowdoin College → Department of Economics, Brunswick, Maine (United States) | 7.00 | 12 | 10 |
| 9 | Claremont McKenna College → Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont, California (United States) | 7.02 | 26 | 10 |
| 10 | Smith College → Department of Economics, Northampton, Massachusetts (United States) | 9.39 | 10 | 10 |
| 11 | Oberlin College → Economics Department, Oberlin, Ohio (United States) | 11.05 | 12 | 10 |
| 12 | Wesleyan University → Economics Department, Middletown, Connecticut (United States) | 11.31 | 17 | 10 |
| 13 | Swarthmore College → Department of Economics, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (United States) | 13.25 | 14 | 10 |
| 14 | Hamilton College → Department of Economics, Clinton, New York (United States) | 13.63 | 20 | 10 |
| 15 | Vassar College → Economics Department, Poughkeepsie, New York (United States) | 16.34 | 9 | 8.25 |
| 16 | Columbia University → Barnard College → Economics Department, New York City, New York (United States) | 16.53 | 7 | 6.95 |
| 17 | Bates College → Department of Economics, Lewiston, Maine (United States) | 16.64 | 17 | 10 |
| 18 | Lafayette College → Department of Economics, Easton, Pennsylvania (United States) | 17.07 | 17 | 10 |
| 19 | Pomona College → Economics Department, Claremont, California (United States) | 17.19 | 12 | 10 |
| 20 | Colby College → Department of Economics, Waterville, Maine (United States) | 18.29 | 14 | 10 |
| 21 | Gettysburg College → Economics Department, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (United States) | 18.82 | 10 | 9.70 |
| 22 | Johnson C. Smith University → Department of Business Administration and Economics, Charlotte, North Carolina (United States) | 19.61 | 1 | 1 |
| 23 | Berry College → Economics Department, Mount Berry, Georgia (United States) | 20.25 | 8 | 8 |
| 24 | College of the Holy Cross → Department of Economics and Accounting, Worcester, Massachusetts (United States) | 20.68 | 17 | 10 |
| 25 | Grinnell College → Department of Economics, Grinnell, Iowa (United States) | 25.05 | 3 | 3 |
| 26 | Macalester College → Economics Department, St. Paul, Minnesota (United States) | 25.60 | 8 | 7.50 |
| 27 | Washington and Lee University → Department of Economics, Lexington, Virginia (United States) | 26.75 | 6 | 5.11 |
| 28 | St. Lawrence University → Economics Department, Canton, New York (United States) | 27.69 | 9 | 8.70 |
- Citations from CitEc project by José Manuel Barrueco Cruz, University of Valencia, Spain. Hardware provided by Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas (IVIE), Valencia, Spain.
- Abstract views and downloads statistics from LogEc project by Sune Karlsson, Örebro University, Sweden.
- Author registration, institution database, and ranking computations by Christian Zimmermann.
- RePEc has been initiated by Thomas Krichel.