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Economics & Econometrics in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 places Harvard University at rank 1 in Economics & Econometrics, the only institution to hold the top
The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 places Harvard University at rank 1 in Economics & Econometrics, the only institution to hold the top position globally. Across the world, 699 institutions from 75 countries and regions appear in this subject ranking; a median rank cannot be computed, because the institution at the median position has only a published rank range (351-400). For students choosing a graduate program in economics, the distribution of ranked institutions reveals a field where the United States and the United Kingdom dominate the upper tiers, while several other countries maintain substantial representation further down the list.
Global Scale and Geographic Distribution
The 2026 edition of the QS subject rankings for Economics & Econometrics covers 699 institutions worldwide. This is a broad field, with ranked programs spread across 75 countries and regions, making it one of the more widely offered subjects among the 60 discipline-specific rankings published by QS. The institution at the median position has only a published rank range (351-400), so a median rank cannot be computed; the field is characterized by a long tail of institutions rather than a dense cluster near the top.
The country leaderboard for this subject shows a clear hierarchy in terms of institutional representation. The United States leads with 110 ranked institutions, followed by the United Kingdom with 59. China (Mainland) ranks third with 52, and Germany follows with 32. France and India each have 27 ranked institutions, Italy has 23, Australia has 22, Spain has 20, and Canada rounds out the top ten with 18. These figures describe how many institutions from each country appear in the ranking, not the quality of those institutions — a point worth noting when comparing countries with similar counts but very different positions in the upper ranks.
| Country/Region | Ranked Institutions |
|---|---|
| United States of America | 110 |
| United Kingdom | 59 |
| China (Mainland) | 52 |
| Germany | 32 |
| France | 27 |
| India | 27 |
| Italy | 23 |
| Australia | 22 |
| Spain | 20 |
| Canada | 18 |
The Top Tier: Concentration at the Very Top
The upper end of the Economics & Econometrics ranking is highly concentrated. The top 10 positions are held by 10 distinct institutions, and all of them score above 90 in their overall subject score. The top 20 contains 20 institutions, and the top 30 contains 30 — meaning that there are no ties breaking the sequential structure in these bands. At the top 50 level, there are exactly 50 institutions, and the top 100 band contains 101 institutions, indicating a single tie somewhere in the 51–100 range.
Looking at score bands, the distribution becomes clearer. Only 10 institutions achieve an overall score of 90 or above, while 30 institutions score 80 or above. The 70–79 band contains 99 institutions, and the 60–69 band contains 73. Notably, among the institutions with a published overall score, the lowest band is 60–69, which contains 73 institutions. This means that among the 202 institutions with a published overall score, the lowest scores fall in the 60–69 band, which contains 73 institutions; the remaining 497 institutions are listed with a rank or rank band but no overall score, and a missing score does not mean they scored below any threshold.
Rank bands tell a similar story. The 11–20 band holds 10 institutions, the 21–30 band holds 10, and the 31–50 band holds 20. The 51–100 band contains 51 institutions, the 101–150 band contains 49, and the 151–200 band contains 52. Beyond rank 200, the distribution widens: 299 institutions are within the top 300, and 400 institutions are ranked outside the top 300. This means that more than half of all ranked programs — 400 out of 699 — sit outside the top 300, reinforcing the long-tail structure of the field.
| Subject Rank | Institution | Country/Region | Academic Reputation | Employer Reputation | Citations | Overall Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard University | United States of America | 100 | 100 | 95.6 | 99.1 |
| 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States of America | 98.7 | 95.6 | 99.8 | 97.8 |
| 3 | Stanford University | United States of America | 96.2 | 95.8 | 97.4 | 96.6 |
| 4 | University of Chicago | United States of America | 95.8 | 79.4 | 100 | 94 |
| 5 | Princeton University | United States of America | 97.8 | 82.3 | 96.8 | 93.8 |
| 6 | The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) | United Kingdom | 97 | 85.5 | 90.4 | 93.1 |
| 7 | University of California, Berkeley (UCB) | United States of America | 93.9 | 86.6 | 94 | 93 |
| 8 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom | 93.5 | 97 | 86.3 | 92.3 |
| 9 | Yale University | United States of America | 92.1 | 90.2 | 95 | 92.1 |
| 10 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom | 91.7 | 96.4 | 85.3 | 90.4 |
| 11 | Columbia University | United States of America | 88.6 | 85.1 | 92 | 89.5 |
| 12 | New York University (NYU) | United States of America | 86.3 | 81.8 | 89 | 86.9 |
| 12 | University of Pennsylvania | United States of America | 85.9 | 83.1 | 90.4 | 86.9 |
| 14 | University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) | United States of America | 84.9 | 82.9 | 91.3 | 86.6 |
| 14 | National University of Singapore (NUS) | Singapore | 88.1 | 87.6 | 83.9 | 86.6 |
| 16 | Northwestern University | United States of America | 86.6 | 72.6 | 93.7 | 86.2 |
| 17 | UCL | United Kingdom | 86.8 | 80.8 | 86.4 | 85.9 |
| 18 | Bocconi University | Italy | 86.3 | 78.8 | 88.7 | 85.8 |
| 19 | Peking University | China (Mainland) | 82.2 | 84.5 | 84.1 | 84.2 |
| 20 | Tsinghua University | China (Mainland) | 80 | 84.7 | 86.7 | 83.9 |
Head-to-Head: What the Top Institutions Show
For students comparing programs at the very top, the score gaps between leading institutions are narrow but meaningful. The overall scores available in the ranking show that the top 10 programs all exceed 90 points, with the highest scores reaching into the high 90s. Specifically, the top-ranked institution — Harvard University — holds an overall score of 99.1, while the second-ranked institution scores 97.8, and the third scores 96.6. The scores decline gradually through the top 10, with the tenth-ranked institution scoring 90.4.
Beyond the top 10, the score distribution drops more noticeably: the lowest published score among the top 20 is 83.9, among the top 30 is 80.1, among the top 50 is 76.4, and among the top 100 is 71.9. The lowest published score among the top 20 is 83.9, while the lowest published score among the top 30 is 80.1. The lowest published score among the top 50 is 76.4, and the lowest published score among the top 100 is 71.9. The published scores range from 99.1 at the top down to 71.9 among the top 100, while the tenth-ranked institution scores 90.4 — a relatively compressed range at the top, but one that widens as you move down the table.
The 2026 ranking also shows that the top 10 institutions are all located in either the United States or the United Kingdom, with the United States holding the majority of these positions. The 11–20 band includes institutions from both countries as well, but by the 21–30 band, other countries begin to appear. The 31–50 band shows a more diverse mix, with institutions from several European and Asian countries entering the picture.
What This Means for Prospective Students
For students selecting a program by subject, the key takeaway from the 2026 Economics & Econometrics ranking is that the field is globally distributed but hierarchical in quality. The United States and the United Kingdom have the largest overall presence in the ranking, with 110 and 59 ranked institutions respectively. China (Mainland) has the third-largest number of ranked programs, but its institutions are concentrated in the middle and lower ranks rather than the top 50.
The score bands reveal a notable feature of this ranking: among the 202 institutions with a published overall score, the lowest scores fall in the 60–69 band. This means that among the institutions with a published overall score, the lowest scores fall in the 60–69 band; the composite indicators used by QS include academic reputation, employer reputation, citations, H-index, and international research network, and the 497 institutions without a published score are still ranked. Among the 202 institutions with a published overall score, none falls below the 60–69 band; the other 497 institutions are listed with a rank or rank band but no overall score, and a missing score does not mean the institution scored below any threshold or was dropped from the ranking.
For students considering programs outside the top 100, the 2026 ranking shows that 598 institutions are ranked outside the top 100, and 400 are ranked outside the top 300. This does not mean these programs lack quality — rather, it reflects the fact that Economics & Econometrics is a large field with many active research groups, and the ranking captures a wide spectrum of institutional performance.
Data Notes
The figures in this article are drawn from the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), with a data reference date of 2026-04-03. The ranking covers 60 subject-specific tables, each incorporating five component indicators: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, H-index, and international research network. The Economics & Econometrics table includes 699 institutions globally, spanning 75 countries and regions.
The ranking was parsed by subject block and then filtered by country. Rank values are reported as the lower bound integer. A median rank cannot be computed for this subject, because the institution at the median position has only a published rank range (351-400). The score bands cover only the 202 institutions with a published overall score, while the rank bands reflect the distribution of ranks across the full list of 699 institutions. The country leaderboard counts the number of ranked institutions from each country, not the number of programs or departments. Institutions that appear in multiple subject rankings are counted separately in each subject table.
One limitation of the data is that the ranking does not include unranked programs, and the country counts therefore reflect only those institutions that met the inclusion criteria for the 2026 edition. Additionally, the score bands show that among the 202 institutions with a published overall score, none falls below the 60–69 band; the remaining 497 institutions are listed with a rank or rank band but no overall score, and a missing score does not mean the institution scored below any threshold. Readers should treat the ranking as one measure of institutional performance, and consider other factors — such as faculty research interests, curriculum structure, and placement outcomes — when making program decisions.