Top-5 ranked MIT econ PhD applicants publish 3x more than next 20, paper finds
paulnovosad · x · 2026-10-13
Angrist-Diederichs-Ellison use MIT econ's internal ranking of 200 PhD applicants per year to link admissions rank to later output.
- Applicants ranked 1–5 publish 3x more (coauthorship- and impact-adjusted) than those ranked 6–25, who in turn publish 3x more than those ranked 151–200
- Mean weighted publications (WDI): 2.03 for ranks 1–5 vs 0.72 for 6–25 and 0.22 for 151–200
- N=2,582, publications through 2024
The result suggests research talent is highly identifiable at the application stage, with a small top slice producing outsized scholarship.
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