عملکرد آموزشی برنامه های تحصیلات تکمیلی اقتصاد در شرق و جنوب شرق آسیا

This paper considers educational performance of economics graduate programs in East and Southeast Asia by examining the highest educational origins of the regional contributors in the top five journals between January 1995 and July 2005. Evidence proves that East and Southeast Asian graduates represent 13% of the contributors, have a 10% share of the regional aggregate AER-equivalent-length pages, and American doctors are dominant. Educational productivity of East and Southeast Asian economics graduate programs is thought to be equal, at best, to that of the middle-ranked ones in the United States top-50 schools.

What performance levels have Asian economics schools achieved? Performance of economics departments or economics graduate programs has two categories: faculty research performance and educational performance such as research productivity of graduates. Faculty research performance is significant in assessing departments or graduate programs, and has been examined domestically or worldwide by many scholars. Jin and Yau (1999) made an East and Southeast Asian ranking on faculty research productivity and compared it with that of the United States universities. Coupé (2003) and Kalaitzidakis, Stengos, and Mamuneas (2003) offered worldwide rankings. These three articles suggest that faculty research performance of the top schools in Asia is comparable to that of European or North American universities. Educational performance is also important to a great number of people, especially to current or prospective students and university administrators, and has been considered by several papers. Hogan (1973), Hogan (1986), and Collins, Cox, and Stango (2000) analyzed research productivity of the United States economics schools graduates by counting pages in the top economics journals. Hogan (1973) and Hogan (1986) examined three journals, and Collins et al. (2000) made an analysis of both a set of 36 journals and a smaller set of five journals. Laband (1985) and Laband (1986) took not only a quantitative factor but also a qualitative one of citations into account, and scrutinized research productivity of the US economics departments graduates by analyzing a set of 27 journals and a set of 24 journals, respectively. Pieper and Willis (1999) took a different step from them, and ranked educational performance of economics graduate programs by calculating the graduates’ shares of full-time economics department positions. Thus many efforts have been made for evaluating educational performance in the US economics graduate programs. However, no attention has been paid to that of economics schools in Asia. The purpose of this paper is to examine educational performance of economics graduate programs in East and Southeast Asia from a few aspects. This study intends to compare it with that in the United States, and to show the relative research performance of East and Southeast Asian schools graduates. This paper will also demonstrate one of the reasons why many students in East and Southeast Asian countries desire to go to the United States to study economic science. The next section gives an explanation for the method that is used for the analysis, and presents data for the highest educational origins of the distinguished economists in the region. It also offers publication data on research productivity of East and Southeast Asian economics schools graduates, and roughly compares it with that of the US economics Ph.D.-awarding schools graduates. The last section makes concluding remarks.

This study has examined the highest educational origins of the East and Southeast Asian scholars whose articles appeared in a set of top-5 journals from January 1995 to July 2005. This paper has also analyzed educational productivity of economics graduate schools in the region by calculating AER-equivalent-length pages per graduate, and has roughly compared it with that in the United States. First, most of the eminent economists affiliated with East and Southeast Asian universities were trained in the United States. It is little or no exaggeration to describe that universities in the region depend on the US economics graduate programs in bearing top economists. As Jin and Yau (1999), Coupé (2003) and Kalaitzidakis et al. (2003) suggest, in faculty research productivity a few universities in the region equally match famous research-oriented universities in Europe and North America. However, as far as educational performance is concerned, economics schools in the region are not yet competitors to the top-50 economics graduate programs in the United States. This implies that economics graduate schools in the United States offer educational programs with higher quality, and supports the popular view that East and Southeast Asian students wish to attend economics Ph.D. programs in the United States because of their comparative advantage in education. Secondly, in East and Southeast Asia educational performance does not seem to be closely related with faculty research performance. Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in spite of their relatively young ages, are well known for their outstanding faculty research performance, whereas this study intimates that they have not been successful in breeding top economists. This seemingly means that to bring up distinguished scholars in economic science requires more time than to raise faculty research productivity.9 Finally, as mentioned, this paper has considered educational performance of East and Southeast Asian schools by examining the highest educational origins of the regional contributors in the five quality journals. If we examine a larger set of top journals or examine the contributors in the five journals more in detail, we might have a different observation from this study.