Tuesday 1 March 2011

The Portuguese Economists

The 2011 issue of "Economics Research in Portugal: People and Institutions", which lists and ranks academic research in economics, is now available.

This is a notable effort (by Paulo Guimaraes and Miguel Portela) in compiling and disseminating information about the work done by Portuguese economists (and non-Portuguese economists based in Portugal) in pushing the frontiers of knowledge in the "dismal science".

According to the website, there's somewhat surprising evidence that 2010 was a not very good year in terms of academic results, given the upward trend starting in the mid-1980s. But perhaps this is only a one-off blip (or, alternatively, 2008 and 2009 were one-off spikes):


Here's the list of top 10 economists, according to one of the many criteria (summing all research contributions since 1970 and weighting each article using a combination of metrics):

1: Sergio Rebelo, Northwestern U
2: Luis Cabral, New York U
3: Pedro Pita Barros, U Nova
4: Miguel Villas-Boas, U CA, Berkeley
5: Nuno Garoupa, U Illinois
6: Alfredo Marvão Pereira, Col William & Mary
7: João Santos Silva, U Essex
8: Guilherme Carmona, U Nova
9: Nuno Limão, U Maryland
10: Pedro Portugal, U Nova

It's interesting to note that only three out of those ten economists are based in Portugal (and all of those are in the same university, Nova).

2 comments:

  1. Caro Pedro,
    Apenas uma correção, o Guilherme Carmona está na University of Cambridge neste momento.
    Saudações académicas,
    Joao Tovar Jalles

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  2. Dear Pedro

    thanks for your post. Indeed we, as economists, are indepted to the efforts of Paulo Guimaraes and Miguel Portela. I am sure most people outside the academia were unaware of these rankings of portuguese economists and will be surprised to learn that there are so many of us. The grants by JNICT (now the FCT) are to a great extent, I am sure, responsible for the great increase in the number of Portuguese PhDs that are now spread throughout North America and Europe.

    Regards
    Matilde Pinto Machado

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