Two programs within the Department of Economics at UC Santa Barbara have been ranked among the top 10 in the nation by Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), a volunteer-driven initiative to create a public-access database that promotes scholarly communication in economics and related disciplines.
Only M.I.T. and Harvard University ranked higher than UCSB in environmental economics, and the department's experimental economics program placed sixth behind the University of Chicago, UC San Diego, Chapman University, Harvard University, and New York University. In addition, the cognitive and behavioral economics program ranked 12th. Other UC campuses among the top 12 include UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, at numbers three and four, respectively.
The ranking is a joint product of RePEc and the University of Connecticut, where the database is maintained. The results are based on 31 different criteria, including the number of citations and the publications in which they appeared, the total number of works authored by a particular scholar, journal page counts, the number of times document abstracts have been viewed on the RePEc Web site, and the frequency with which they have been downloaded.
"These rankings are a testament to the commitment UCSB has made to these fields over the past two decades, though of course it is the faculty in environmental, experimental, and behavioral economics who deserve the most credit," said Charles Kolstad, chair and professor of economics and professor at UCSB's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. "The stature of departments is built one field at a time. The Department of Economics hopes to strengthen all of its core fields over the next five years so that each is top five nationally."
Said Melvin Oliver, the SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences at UCSB: "We are gratified that our Department of Economics faculty who specialize in environment, experimental, and cognitive and behavioral economics are recognized in national rankings for their outstanding quality. Such recognition speaks to the scholarly research they continue to produce while educating and mentoring nearly 2,500 undergraduate and 85 graduate students. These rankings reflect a faculty that embraces the teaching and research mission of the University of California."
RePEc welcomes all providers of published and unpublished materials to place their bibliographic information in the public domain. Unpublished materials include working papers, discussion papers, research reports, and conference papers. All RePEc materials –– including complete details about the rankings –– are available at http://repec.org.
The RePEc database offers information on more than 865,000 items, of which over 740,000 are available online. Among these are 505,000 journal articles, 340,000 working papers, and 18,000 book and chapter listings. The database, which features contact listings for 23,500 authors and publications, and for 11,500 institutions, also contains 1,900 software components. Institutions and publishers around the world participating in RePEc include Elsevier, Cambridge University Press, the Federal Reserve System, World Bank, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, the International Monetary Fund, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Related Links
Share this article
