What British Economists think of their Journal

Richard Quandt has recently noted an increasing tendency on the part of professional economists to introspect their work and activities. Whether this trend derives from some existential angst brought on by a feeling that the marginal social return from the nth journal article does not differ significantly from zero, or whether it results from a desire to formalise sheer bloody‐mindedness (“my two page article in the American Economic Review is better than your 50 page survey in the Journal of Cerebral Economics”) is not our concern. We simply wish to move with the tide by producing our own survey of how British economists rank the “prestige” of the professional journals. Our survey results are reported below and it will be seen that they have been produced in a manner which makes them directly comparable to those produced for America by Hawkins, Ritter and Walter. We also offer some comparisons with the findings of Moore.