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How can we find out the speciality of a school for the ones ranking below top 15?


Bayern

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I do not know whether it has a common sense answer. I do not know much about famous economists, and the most of the ones I know of, are in the top 10 schools. So, given that I do not know the name of too many economists, can I just base my judgments on the specializations of schools on visiting their websites and see how many people are working in a specific field, and then use the rankings to guide me how good those departments may be?

 

I am thinking about schools ranging from 15-50 in rankings. Econphd.net also had a spreadsheet on specialization of the universities. Given that it is around 5 years old, can I also base part of my judgments on that spreadsheet? How much do the specialization of a department change anyway over time, especially the ones which are very focused?

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Specialties change very quickly, at a small program a single hire can turn the strongest field into a weakling and vice versa. You should not rely too heavily on any rankings or spreadsheets.

 

Go to the school in question and look at faculty cvs. Find the tenured faculty with the most recent top publications. Their fields will be the strongest ones in the department. Also, find out which faculty are responsible for the best placements.

 

Heavily discount faculty who once published well but have few recent publications. You do not want to work with deadwood.

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One related question is then, does the recent placements tell a lot about the popular fields in that department? For example, if there are a significant number of people getting a phd has a speciality in Development, can that mean that the program is partly specialized in development? I am of course assuming that some of those placements are pretty good/decent.
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15-50 schools are solid enough to maintain their presence in the fields their people prefer, after all the underlying decision making is (financially constrained) democratic process, and losing advantage in a certain field means remaining representatives of that field will have their work conditions deteriorated. And when we consider a field that is relative advantage of the dept, those guys will have the most bargaining power. Beware of aging clusters and budget shocks, though.
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