UW Ranks Highly in List of Economics Graduate Programs

The University of Wyoming’s Ph.D. program in economics has received high marks in a new worldwide ranking based on the academic success of graduates.

UW’s Department of Economics has a long-standing reputation for excellence in faculty research, but this new ranking highlights the department’s success in graduating leading scholars in the field.

IDEAS, a prestigious worldwide organization that disseminates economics research, compared graduate programs based on the research record of their graduates. The ranking placed UW’s economics Ph.D. program among the top 1 percent worldwide.

UW’s Department of Economics ranked first in the Mountain West region, 31st among all U.S. universities and 66th globally. IDEAS is a service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“I’m really pleased by this recent ranking of our graduate student outcomes. We’ve designed a small, focused graduate program where students continually collaborate on research with productive faculty,” says David Aadland, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Economics. “Observing the placement record of our graduate students over the past couple of decades, I knew we were doing a good job of training our students and preparing them for successful careers as economists. This ranking confirms that our efforts are paying off.”

Among U.S. universities, UW comes in ahead of peers such as Purdue University, Vanderbilt University, University of Colorado, University of North Carolina, University of California-Davis, University of Oregon, Colorado State University, Georgetown University, University of Texas-Austin, Michigan State University and Penn State University. UW follows Ohio State University, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is at the top of the list.

Part of UW’s College of Business, the Department of Economics offers undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics.

In 2015, IDEAS ranked UW sixth among international universities in the field of environmental economics, based on citations by peers and other criteria. In 2010, the National Research Council ranked the department as the nation’s leader in faculty research output and eighth overall in research productivity out of 120 U.S. Ph.D. programs.