It can be somewhat difficult to determine ‘the university at which the economist is employed’ from the information provided when self-registering at RePEc Author Service. Can you tell me which affiliation we should consider for P.C.B. Phillips?

I have incorporated your suggestion in the rankings released today.

Now regarding misclassification in the field rankings: Kevin asks why some prominent economic historians do not show up. They are all registered with RePEc, so this is not the problem. All but one qualify for the field. The one who does not is Douglass North, because only one of his five papers announced in NEP made it to the NEP-HIS report. Why are then the others not among the top 5%? It may have to do with the fact that the ranking is polluted with the other type of misclassification: authors that are only marginally in the field, but overall rank higher. This is a consequence of the choice I made of making an unweighted ranking of everyone who qualifies. Maybe I should weigh each by the proportion of papers announced in NEP that are in the field. Bob Margo then would certainly make it, as 14 of 19 papers were listed in NEP-HIS. Bob Lucas, currently on top, probably would rank lower, as only one of his three NEP papers qualify.

To see how this kind of misclassification may matter, see how Tom Cooley is the top agricultural economist. Currently, he is dean of the business school at NYU. Busy as he must be, he has not refreshed his profile for some time. Thus he has just three papers in NEP, one of them in agricultural economics (on social security with an agricultural sector). But he is very highly ranked overall, and this makes him the top ageconomist. Similarly, Bob Barro is tops in every field he qualifies for, by virtue of being the top ranked economist overall. I think we need to find a good way to weigh the scores by field.

There is a post-normal whiff here.

The national ranking is more important, because it contains my immediate peers, and because it is one that national funders and assessors will look at. People are known to select a strategy that improves their rank. (My Irish rank would improve if I get the many second rate publications of my compatriots on IDEAS/RePEc.) In a small country, the national definition of excellence may diverge from the global definition. There is already a deviation between Irish norms and international norms — because the mediocre majority in this country has very peculiar ideas on what a good economist should and should not do.

Therefore, I think that IDEAS/RePEc should display both national/national and national/global ranks, and the national/global ranking should determine the order in which people are displayed.

Now, how can we explain these “oddities” where the ranks can be different from the worldwide ranking? Say economist A is much better than compatriot B in some dimension, but slightly worse on others. In the worldwide ranking, A gets a better score and possibly rank because he managed to get many non-nationals between him and the others for his strong criteria. In the ranking from the national pool, he is just one rank ahead, and B is just ahead on the others. On aggregate, B may be ahead. Richard is like economist A in that he is very prolific and thus garners many bonus points from this in the worldwide ranking. But not in the national ranking.