PandaInUniv has released the Economics PhD Rankings 2026 , an outcomes based guide for reading PhD programs through graduate placement results rather than reputation surveys or faculty publication counts. The report is designed for applicants, students, faculty, and departments that want to understand what recent graduates actually do after the PhD, and how comparable those outcomes are across programs. The current edition covers 5,171 first placement records from 150 U.S. programs across the 2021 2025 graduating cohorts, spanning economics, agricultural economics, and business economics. The rankings use mean score across scored placements, where lower is better. Tenure track placements at RePEc ranked departments receive the destination department's rank; postdocs, visiting positions, and research fellowships are treated as transitional roles and scored by the next career move, with a penalty for longer transitions. Private sector roles are reported separately but are not included in the program score. The main U.S. economics table shows how placement quality and placement mix can diverge. The top 10 are: | Rank | Program | Mean | Grads | Acad. | TT | |: :|: | :| :| :| :| | 1 | MIT, Economics | 96 | 64 | 85.9% | 49.1% | | 2 | Harvard, Economics | 121 | 147 | 63.3% | 59.1% | | 3 | UC Berkeley, Economics | 122 | 87 | 74.7% | 50.8% | | 4 | Stanford, Economics | 122 | 110 | 54.5% | 60.0% | | 5 | Northwestern, Economics | 136 | 101 | 68.3% | 58.0% | | 6 | NYU, Economics | 151 | 61 | 78.7% | 52.1% | | 7 | Chicago, Economics | 164 | 101 | 68.3% | 46.4% | | 8 | Princeton, Economics | 168 | 94 | 68.1% | 45.3% | | 9 | UCLA, Economics | 202 | 82 | 59.8% | 59.2% | | 10 | Penn, Economics | 204 | 73 | 69.9% | 52.9% | Those rows should not be read as a simple prestige list. For example, academic placement shares range from 54.5% at Stanford to 85.9% at MIT, while tenure track shares among scored placements range from 45.3% at Princeton to 60.0% at Stanford. Chicago has a larger central bank and international organization share than most peers in the top group, which matters for readers who value research policy careers alongside academic jobs. The agricultural economics table uses the same scoring framework on programs whose graduates often place into economics departments, policy institutions, and applied research roles. Its top 10 are: | Rank | Program | Mean | Grads | Acad. | TT | |: :|: | :| :| :| :| | 1 | UC Berkeley, Agricultural and Resource Economics | 183 | 36 | 69.4% | 48.0% | | 2 | Cornell, Applied Economics and Management | 275 | 44 | 72.7% | 43.8% | | 3 | Minnesota, Applied Economics | 286 | 31 | 67.7% | 33.3% | | 4 | Maryland, Agricultural and Resource Economics | 296 | 23 | 56.5% | 38.5% | | 5 | UC Davis, Agricultural and Resource Economics | 299 | 69 | 69.6% | 43.8% | | 6 | Wisconsin Madison, Agricultural and Applied Economics | 318 | 32 | 68.8% | 59.1% | | 7 | Michigan State, Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics | 346 | 48 | 64.6% | 38.7% | | 8 | Purdue, Agricultural Economics | 368 | 37 | 64.9% | 29.2% | | 9 | Oregon State, Agricultural and Resource Economics | 376 | 18 | 83.3% | 26.7% | | 10 | Kansas State, Agricultural Economics | 379 | 27 | 92.6% | 56.0% | The business economics section is smaller. Under the report's minimum RePEc matched placement rule, six U.S. business economics programs qualify for ranking in this edition: | Rank | Program | Mean | Grads | Acad. | TT | |: :|: | :| :| :| :| | 1 | Stanford, Economic Analysis & Policy | 45 | 9 | 100.0% | 44.4% | | 2 | Harvard Business School, Business Economics | 72 | 23 | 95.7% | 95.5% | | 3 | Chicago Booth, Economics | 110 | 16 | 56.2% | 100.0% | | 4 | Wharton, Applied Economics | 146 | 16 | 87.5% | 64.3% | | 5 | NYU Stern, Economics | 173 | 13 | 53.8% | 14.3% | | 6 | Lehigh, Business and Economics | 396 | 9 | 100.0% | 44.4% | Across all 5,171 graduates in the U.S. report window, 31.7% entered tenure track roles, 16.1% started in postdocs, 6.1% became research fellows, 3.0% took visiting positions, 3.1% entered teaching roles, 3.8% went to central banks, 3.2% went to international organizations, and 33.0% entered nonacademic placements. Among nonacademic destinations, consulting, government, and tech are the largest sectors, followed by finance and financial services. The report also emphasizes limits. Programs that publish detailed placement pages are better represented, recent cohorts have unresolved transitional placements, and business economics programs are often small. The rankings are therefore best used as directional evidence about placement patterns: how often graduates land in academic roles, how much a program relies on postdoc pathways, how common policy institution placements are, and how outcomes differ across fields. The full attached PDF includes complete ranking tables, score and coverage breakdowns, postdoc transition analysis, private sector outcomes, gender trends, and the full methodology.