In an article I did in the Journal of Economic Perspectives on rankings,
I said that rankings had been beaten to death, and it was time to drop
them. It didn't help. The reality is that rankings will take place no
matter what we say. So we will have to live with them. To fight them one
has to develop alternative rankings, and methods of showing that the
rankings provide little to no information that people didn't already
know. That's what I'm trying to do now. In a paper that alas is still in
progress, "Who's Better:  US or European Economics?" I show that the
proxies they use (journal articles) are only a small portion of
economists'  total output (which includes teaching, other research, and
service), (I estimate 20%) and that emphasis in one reduces emphasis in
the others, so the probability of the rankings carrying through is
exceedingly small, even if there is positive correlation with other
activities.  I fault all the rankings producers for not making clear
what portion of economists' output they think they are ranking, and far
too often jumping from a ranking of journal article publication to a
ranking of economists.  

The result I come to is that we cannot say whose better--Imagine that. 

David Colander