“Cream of the crop”: A prosopographical analysis of the top 150 economists in the RePEc ranking

This chapter is based on a study of an original prosopographical database of the 150 economists with the highest RePEC rankings in 2022. This database was analyzed using the multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) method from a Bourdieusian sociology of science and intellectuals perspective. The essential aim of this analysis was to investigate the structuring of a scientific elite whose scientific recognition and domination are sanctioned (and in part produced) by a ranking that enjoys relative consensus within a large part of the discipline. However, far from the unambiguous hierarchical claims to which rankings are, by their very nature, intended to give rise, the chapter shows, on the contrary, the diversity of ways in which excellence is embodied and the professional, academic, and scientific paths by which it is achieved. The MCA nuances the idea of a very strong injunction to scientific conformity and also reveals the range of possibilities in terms of scientific practices. The MCA thus reveals several “poles” of economists, distinguished and contrasted according to the volume and structure of the different types of capital of the economists who make them up.