Excellence in Research for Australia: An Audit of the Applied Economics Rankings

Abstract

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Report attempts to quantify the quality of research undertaken in Australian universities in the field of ' Applied Economics '. The paper shows it is difficult to reconcile the ERA rankings with the underlying data drawn from the Scopus database. Since the ERA rankings cannot be replicated , and since the ERA process is non-transparent, its rankings should be treated with some caution .