Month: April 2023

The best ranking is Ritzberger(2008) [1]. I mostly agree with everything on it, especially the A+ and A tier. Also, the list does not include Journal of Economic Literature and Journal of Economic Perspectives,

because they solicit papers rather than taking submissions,

which is a good point and quite fair in academic evaluation.

The next ranking that is partially worth noticing is Ming-Jen Lin et al. (2019) [2]. The downside of this alternative is that it is too loosely distinguished in its A+ tier. 36 of them are in the same A+ tier. That does not exert the functionality of distinction. There are definitely good ones and not-so-good ones in anything within a basket of 36 items. This list should distinguish the A+ tier more delicately and divide some into the new A tier, and move the original A tier to a new B+ tier. Beside, this list ranks JELs which do not accept submissions from the general public as suggested by Ritzberger(2008), which is not considerate. Anyways, the list is good for a latest ranking list, whereas not as good as the Ritzberger(2008) list.

So, for now, the best ranking list in economics and finance is still the Ritzberger(2008) list. It is too sensible to necessitate a new one. One should fill new journals in the original Ritzberger(2008) list rather than proposing a new one. Here is what it is.

A+ : Top journals  Value KMS PV
Econometrica 100 96.78 100
Quarterly Journal of Economics 72.41 58.11 98.83
Review of Economic Studies 53.02 45.15 64.33
Journal of Political Economy 51.34 65.19 66.86
Journal of Finance 38.33 – –
Journal of Monetary Economics 37.91 36.41 46.10
American Economic Review 36.14 100 75.93
Journal of Economic Theory 34.58 58.76 34.41
Journal of Econometrics 25.99 54.91 21.15
Games and Economic Behavior 21.24 35.49 32.55
A: Excellent journals
International Economic Review 39.44 23.04 15.59
Journal of Financial Economics 30.97 9.89 15.01
Review of Financial Studies 30.39 – –
Journal of Economic Growth 29.45 – –
Journal of International Economics 22.87 7.84 11.40
Review of Economics and Statistics 20.11 28.02 16.28
Journal of Labor Economics 19.21 12.76 17.35
Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 17.66 38.41 14.81
Journal of Public Economics 17.10 19.77 16.28
Economic Journal 16.78 20.71 11.89
Economic Theory 15.30 22.43 18.23
RAND Journal of Economics 14.11 11.44 20.08
Econometric Theory 11.78 45.85 16.08
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 11.16 14.54 10.53
Journal of Mathematical Economics 10 7.64 10.04

 

Life is a process of accumulation, accumulating the trial and errors. Just as what Elon Musk did with the super heavy rocket. The trick for very good ones is, never look for a reason when doing all these kind of things. Look for a reason is nothing more than a sign that you are not patient enough. And accumulating takes time. The less you care about the whys, the more progress you will make in the period of unawareness.

Difference between mathematician and researchers in majors of applied math?

Mathematician cares about the ways to conduct a proof. Other researchers care only about the theorem itself in a practical way, not interested in the proof at all.

Mathematician cares about the directions of developing a notion. Other researchers care only about the notion itself.

How to tell a good scholar from a bad one?

1. Pick one of his work that is published single authored. You can only tell one’s research taste and writing style from the single authored work. Even a work with two authors does not distinguish his contribution, regardless of whether he is the first author or not. There are too many cases where the first author contribute little to the actual work load and it is nearly impossible to tell them apart. If you insist on investigating that, you will have to recognize his writing style and research field from the single authored work and then carefully compare them with the paper that is co-authored. This is quite amount of work and it is only possible if you are fully proficient in this area.
2. Exclude those works that are part of  work when they are PhD students. Many people can’t produce good works after their graduation. This phenomenon is particularly significant for PhDs graduated from 2nd tier US universities(ranking from 11 to 30 on university ranking list such as ARWU. No offense. Just several samples fall into this interval). Within US college, they can get ideas from seminars and academic advice from really good academic guys, yet they are nothing after leaving the atmosphere. If you see someone’s only first tier paper contains this sentence-“Part of the work was done when xx was a PhD student in the University of xxx”, then he is highly skeptical to a lack of capability to do research alone. You should not take that piece of work into consideration when assessing his academic potential. Note that I am not saying that any work within the period of PhD student are not valuable. I am saying that you should NOT take that work as the ONLY argument when assessing his academic capacity. You need more of his works to confirm. If he has other works and those works match the same research taste, research field and writing style, that’s robust conclusion. It is highly suspicious otherwise.

 

Recently, I found that building a habit of push-ups is essential for a sustainable academic career. Keep the strength in waist will help one to sit straight and minimize energy loss coming out of  a bad sitting posture. From the word of a health advisor in Harvard [1], it is impossible to maintain the subtlety of being able to maintain the body in ideal postures without a basic amount of core strength. Even for workout of push-ups, it is by no means possible to do in standard position without a certain period of training time. And it is still worthy to keep going with bad position, just to turn the basic core strength into reality.

PS: This way of workout applies in many other fields.