Ranking the Rankings of Journals in Economics by Quantifying Journal Demand

This paper revisits Odagiri's (REStat, 1977) estimation of the demand for economics journals. While Odagiri employed 25 (or fewer) titles, the present paper explores the vast and growing universe of economics outlets. To this end the analysis employs circulation data for general and field journals published in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory. The manuscript also conducts a comparative evaluation of rankings of economics journals, employing alternative rankings as a proxy for journal quality — following Odagiri — in a demand equation. The authors know of no study that so broadly examines the degree to which a set of journal rankings can explain journal demand