<p>John Siegfried and Wendy Stock authored a 2006 paper that identified colleges with the highest rates of economics PhD production, normalized by institution size and by economics program size (you can Google it by author names). I ran my own query against NSF data for economics PhDs earned in 2007-2011, adjusted for the total number of bachelors degrees awarded at each school in the preceding 5 years (2002-2006). Here are the resulting top 25:</p>
<p>Rank … College … Earned Econ PhDs 2007-11 … Earned Bachelors 2002-06… Rate</p>
<p>1 Williams College 23 2580 0.89%
2 Harvard University 75 8955 0.84%
3 Swarthmore College 14 1824 0.77%
4 University of Chicago 35 5129 0.68%
5 Princeton University 36 5598 0.64%
6 MIT 38 6011 0.63%
7 Wellesley College 17 2972 0.57%
8 Stanford University 47 8739 0.54%
9 Macalester College 11 2133 0.52%
10 Simon’s Rock 1 220 0.45%
11 CalTech 5 1165 0.43%
12 Centre College 5 1225 0.41%
13 Grinnell College 7 1744 0.40%
14 Randolph-Macon Woman’s College 3 774 0.39%
15 St John’s College (Annapolis) 2 515 0.39%
16 Wesleyan University 14 3649 0.38%
17 Randolph-Macon College 4 1137 0.35%
18 Reed College 5 1478 0.34%
19 Amherst College 7 2113 0.33%
20 Yale University 21 6628 0.32%
21 Lewis and Clark College 6 1914 0.31%
22 Northwestern Univ 30 10241 0.29%
23 Whitman College 5 1826 0.27%
24 Austin College 4 1511 0.26%
25 Bard College 4 1536 0.26%</p>
<p>source: <a href=“https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/[/url]”>https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/</a></p>
<p>I would tend to discount some of these schools with very low absolute numbers unless they also have very high production rates in related fields or maintain the good results over a longer time frame.</p>
<p>The top 5 research universities in the list above also happen to be the top 5 in the USNWR economics graduate program ranking. The other 3 research universities in the list above also are in the top 15 of the USNWR graduate program ranking (which is based entirely on peer assessment surveys).</p>