Although a little out of date, I came across a recent rankings of U.S. Economics departments. The paper (“Rankings of U.S. Economics Departments“) is written by Richard Dusansky and Clayton J. Vernon and was published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives in 1998. The rankings are as follows:
| Rank | University |
| 1 | Princeton |
| 2 | Harvard |
| 3 | Pennsylvania |
| 3 | MIT |
| 5 | Northwestern |
| 6 | NYU |
| 7 | Boston U. |
| 7 | Yale |
| 9 | UC-San Diego |
| 9 | Stanford |
As you can see from the scores, my school (UC-San Diego) ranks 9th. Rankings from EconPhD.net have UCSD at number 21 (worldwide), but the most recent U.S. News and World Report Economics Department rankings have UCSD at #10 in the nation. Also a study in Science Watch put UCSD as the 5 th highest impact research institution in the nation from 1995-2005 for business and economics and the 2005 rankings from The Chronicle of Higher Education rank UCSD as #9 in Economics.