Well, there’s also Wesleyan University 's College of Letters which is sort of its own version of St. John’s tucked within a somewhat larger LAC. Frankly, if you have 90k a year to spare, that’s the place I would look:
Welcome, College of Letters - Wesleyan University
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Here is a more recent paper with an argument along those lines, including a literature review that cites Hartley and Robinson’s 1997 paper:
https://digitalcommons.carleton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=econ_repec
See particularly pages 5-6.
Personally, I think the arguments in question are somewhat weak. The primary evidence is a correlation between which LACs send the most students to Econ PhD programs and research being conducted by faculty at those LACs. Attributing direct causation to that relationship is problematic, particularly when you see how much of scholarly output is dominated by a few prolific scholars. Of course it may well be true that SOME ongoing engagement with fresh research is useful for college teachers, but whether they need to be the sort of people who drive these rankings is, to me, a far less obvious conclusion. And of course there is so much else you would need to control for to really establish causation, including self-selection of future PhDs.
Frankly, if you are interested in the result of placing PhDs, to me it makes the most sense to just look at that result, rather than at research measures that purportedly correlate with that. That is also tricky but I think it at least removes a noisy step of dubious value.
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Additionally, there’s a lot of soul-searching in grad econ right now because they’ve realized they routinely sidelined legit research projects and people due to bias (like, what many departments had to do 20-30y ago, econ is going through right now). So, rankings are just one aspect to look at.
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Seems like the things a pre-PhD economics major should look at would include:
- How math intensive the intermediate economics and econometrics courses are.
- What upper level economics elective courses are offered.
- What upper level math and statistics courses relevant to economics are offered.
The volume of research output may not necessarily indicate any of the above.
Of course, an economics major with different goals (e.g. Wall Street or general business substitute major) would look for different things, though volume of research output may not be that great an indicator either.
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Since your son appears to be interested in philosophy, look closely at Hamilton. Hamilton may be the only LAC in the U.S. to offer a general summer program in philosophy. This is noteworthy and reflects well on Hamilton’s philosophy program overall. In any case, whichever college he attends, he may want to keep the program in mind.
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Washington college in Maryland. Really great in history, etc. The whole town really is into history-it’s part of the town culture. Can find his tribe there—lots of academic type kids who like to do academic things on weekends as well as many clubs for social activities on week nights and parties avail for those who do want to. (Basically, all kinds of kids go there—athletes, academics, arts—very diverse hobbies, etc) Walkable to a cute town with a farmers market and festivals (Dickens festival, Blues festival) and walkable to a river with free kayaks for the students. Look into Cater Society—allows undergrads to do research and they pick what they want to do research on and get paid to do it. Look at the Starr Center for internships (Smithsonian). Look up Sophie Kerr award. He will be a big fish in a small pond there and the professors will likely give him a lot of great opportunities (TA as an undergrad, awards). The professors are part of the tight knit community. He will get great merit there and save money for grad school. They have a very good grad school %. Beautiful NorthEast type campus. Typically a free common app.
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