Prof Rangan Gupta of the Department of Economics was recently ranked ninth globally among young economists who received their PhD degrees less than 15 years ago. The pool of eligible candidates included more than 28 500 economists.

The ranking is put together by RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), an organisation that keeps a decentralised online bibliographic database of research in Economics, including working papers, journal articles, books and software. The site is entirely open and free, and is run by hundreds of volunteers in 82 countries. Currently, RePEc contains approximately 1,7 million items from 2 100 journals and 4 000 working paper series, including the University of Pretoria’s Department of Economics Working Paper Series.

Prof Gupta’s current research focusses primarily on forecasting, for the most part utilising dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. These models, developed for the South African context, incorporate information from large data sets and allow for nonlinearities. Along with these theoretical structures, he also makes use of time series models, although even in those settings he continues to examine nonlinearities, often in the context of nonparametric time series. In addition to his primary focus on forecasting, he develops dynamic general equilibrium monetary endogenous growth models. Using these models, he examines the effects of various imperfections, such as tax evasion, socio-political instability and social status.

Click here to visit UP’s Department of Economics Working Paper Series.