ESA vs. ERA

The Economic Society of Australia put out its own list of ranked journals last year. Both this list and the ERA list have 37 journals ranked as A* but there are four differences between the two lists. The ESA list included the following four journals that are not in the ERA list:

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
Journal of Business Economics and Statistics
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
Journal of Financial Economics

Instead of these four respectable publications, ERA has:

History of Political Economy
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
The BE Journal in Theoretical Economics
The Journal of Industrial Economics


I've never heard of the first two journals. History of Political Economy has an ISI impact factor of 0.169. It got a total number of 182 citations in 2008. It appears to publish about 40 articles a year. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research has an impact factor of 1.299 and total cites of 1161. It publishes about 55 articles a year. The former journal clearly should not be ranked A*. The latter journal does not appear to be an economics journal. The journal's website states:

"A groundbreaking forum for intellectual debate, IJURR is at the forefront of urban and regional research. With a cutting edge approach to linking theoretical development and empirical research, and a consistent demand for quality, IJURR encompasses key material from an unparalleled range of critical, comparative and geographic perspectives. Embracing a multidisciplinary approach to the field, IJURR is essential reading for social scientists with a concern for the complex, changing roles and futures of cities and regions."

The ESA list isn't perfect either, for example, ESA contains both "JEI" ranked C and "Journal of Economic Issues" ranked A! And it also doesn't include The Energy Journal in economics.

P.S.

As Frank Jotzo points out in the comments, ESA, released a supplementary list of journals including another 16 ranked A* including the Energy Journal. None of these journals are ranked A* in the ERA listing of economics journals though most of the non-economics ones like Annals of Statistics and JASA are A* journals.

P.P.S. 25th February

Michael Ward pointed out in an e-mail to me that of these journals only JEEM was demoted from A* to A. The other three journals were reallocated to statistics and finance from economics.