A survey of rankings of economic departments: Global, american, european and national

We survey the state-of-the-art methods of how to rank economic departments and economists on the basis of 14 studies conducted in years 1995-2005. We cover a diversity of rankings: U.S., worldwide, E.U., those of developed academic nations and those of developing academic nations. Each method rests on a specific goal: while some identify top-notch research, others reflect quantity and thus are able to discriminate down the ranking. We also document novelties in ranking-construction such as sensitivity analysis, parallel rankings, instant updates and journal weights based on impact-adjusted impact factors.