Just as friendly arguments based on an ignorance of facts eventually led to the
creation of the definitive Guinness Book of World Records, any argument about
university rankings has seemingly been a problem without a solution. To state
the obvious, alternative rankings methodologies can and do lead to different
rankings. This paper evaluates the robustness of rankings of Australian and New
Zealand economics teaching departments for 1988-2002 and 1996-2002 using
alternative rankings methodologies, and compares the results with the rankings
obtained by Macri and Sinha (2006). In the overall mean rankings for both 1988-
2006 and 1996-2002, the University of Melbourne is ranked first, followed by
UWA and ANU.
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