The RePEc Genealogy has now reached 15,000 entries. This site describes where and when economists got their terminal degree, as well as who their advisors were. This allows to build a family tree of the economics profession as well as gather information about graduate programs.
The data is gathered by crowdsourcing, much like a wiki: users registered with the RePEc Author Service can log in to the RePEc Genealogy and add or amend the records for themselves, their students, or their advisors. They can also add former students of the graduate programs they currently work with or graduated from.
Beyond displaying it on the RePEc Genealogy site, the collected data is used in a myriad on ways:
- Various studies on economists have leveraged this data.
- Profiles of economists on IDEAS display part of the RePEc Genealogy information where available.
- EDIRC, the directory of economics institutions, has for each relevant institutions a list of alumni and a link to a compilation of their publications.
- Female representation in economics by cohort.
- How well graduate students do is a criterion for the rankings of economists and institutions.
- The year of graduation is also used for rankings of economists by cohort.
Over 4000 people have already contributed to the RePEc Genealogy, everyone is welcome to make it more complete and useful.
The RePEc Blog 
Historical depth would much improve if we could tie the RePEc ID to the ID on the Econometree: https://academictree.org/econ/
Certainly, and we would help anybody who wants to take this on.