A menagerie of rankings: a look in RePEc’s factory

This paper provides an overview of RePEc a digital platform for the dissemination of research in economics. Specifically, the focus is on RePEc’s main author ranking, which aggregates 36 different rankings based on a range of criteria. I first describe the logic behind the ranking and then presents some key descriptive statistics on the top 5% of authors. Notably, the ranking is dominated by English-speaking authors, particularly those affiliated with institutions in the USA. Moreover, less than 9% of authors are female, while around 6% are deceased. Among the living authors, the estimated average age is 60, with over 21% of them aged 70 or above. Next, I discuss the aggregation of the 36 rankings using the harmonic mean—RePEc’s preferred method. Some counterintuitive properties are highlighted. Finally, I propose a simpler ranking system based on two criteria—number of journal pages and number of citations—that weight journals and citations according to their qualities and also correct for the number of authors.