Macquarie University

Research Productivity of Economics Departments in Australia, 1988-2000

Email address: dsinha@efs.mq.edu.au

Abstract:
A number of studies have ranked the economics departments in the US on the basis of research productivity. In recent years, a few studies have ranked economics departments in Australia. These include Towe and Wright (1995) and Harris (1988 and 1990). Harris uses a very broad measure of research output. He includes journal articles, working papers and books and monographs. Towe and Wright confine their study to journal articles that are included in the ECONLIT. This paper examines the research productivity of the economics departments in Australia using data for 1988-2000. The productivity is measured solely by publications in the journal articles that are included in the ECONLIT. This method of measuring productivity has been widely used in the literature. However, a number of features distinguish this study from the previous studies. First, this study uses data for a much longer period (1988-2000) than any other previous studies for any country. Second, this study uses more recent rankings of journals to assign weights to different journals. The two studies used are Laband and Piette (1994) and Mason and Steagall (1997). These two studies rank more journals than any other previous studies.

PDF file of paper: sinha_abstract.pdf

Session: Production, Consumption and Productivity

Time: Friday, 6 July, 3:30pm - 5pm

Room: F