Journal of Comparative Economics

Journal of Comparative Economics is published by Elsevier and is in Zone 2 of Economics in the CAS Journal Ranking (2025 upgraded edition). By OpenAlex counts of its recent articles, its largest topics are Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth, Global trade and economics and Russia and Soviet political economy, together about 21.5% of its articles. Its main subfields are Economics and Econometrics. (generated from OpenAlex topic counts and CAS ranking data)

Published on behalf of the Association for Comparative Economic StudiesThe mission of the Journal of Comparative Economics is to lead the new orientations of research in comparative economics. Before 1989, the core of comparative economics was the comparison of economic systems with in particular the economic analysis of socialism in its different forms. In the last fifteen years, the main focus of interest of comparative economists has been the transition from socialism to capitalism. In recent years, mostly as a result of the transition experience, a new orientation of comparative economics has emerged that focuses on the comparison of the economic effects of the various institutions of capitalism, be it in the legal sphere (common law versus civil law), in the political sphere (different types of democracies and electoral regimes) or in the sphere of culture, social norms, etc. This new orientation is a natural development following the very diverse experience of transitions from socialism to capitalism. The transition experience has indeed shown with a vengeance the importance of institutions in the process of economic development.Questions raised along these new orientations include: what institutions are critical (courts, credit markets, good regulations, etc) for successful growth?; how should institutions be measured (subjective surveys, particular laws on the books, etc); why are certain institutions, such as courts and regulatory culture, slow-moving while others, such as constitutions and electoral procedures, relatively fast-moving; why is there so much cross-sectional variance in the quality of institutions, and what kinds of initial conditions or historic natural experiments can be employed to estimate the causal impact of institutions on economic performance? The Journal of Comparative Economics will maintain its tradition of publishing the best papers on the Chinese economy and of being an important outlet for work on economies in Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union; the Journal of Comparative Economics aims to enlarge the interest of the journal to other emerging market economies.

From the journal's Aims & Scope

Research area (LetPub): ECONOMICS

Editorial board by country: 5 in mainland China (about 16%); most named United States 14, Mainland China 5, Hong Kong, China 3, Chile 3, United Kingdom 2 (32 members with a country) Editorial board ↗Publisher website · 2026-10-01

CAS Journal Ranking

Database indexing

SSCIScopusLetPub

International journal early-warning lists: not listed in any editionLetPub

Editions, and major and minor categories, are shown separately and never merged into one zone; check which edition your institution uses before you submit or report.

Impact

Impact factor

4.07LetPub · 2026-09-13

Impact factor (publisher)

4.1Publisher website · 2026-10-01

CiteScore 2026-06

6LetPub · 2026-09-13

CiteScore (publisher)

6Publisher website · 2026-10-01

SJR 2026-06

1.67LetPub · 2026-09-13

SNIP 2026-06

2.05LetPub · 2026-09-13

h-index

160OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

i10-index

1,532OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

2-year mean citedness

2.66OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

Self-citation rate

2.4%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Share of gold OA articles

30.49%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Volume

Articles per year

52LetPub · 2026-09-13

Sources count differently and were observed at different times, so each source's own value is kept; "publisher" marks figures from the journal's website.

Figures by source

First decision after review

93 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Submission to acceptance

351 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Peer review

Single-anonymous peer reviewPublisher website · model-extracted

Community reports come from authors' own submissions (confidence 0.5) and are not a promise from the journal; for publisher figures, the journal's own definitions apply.

A hybrid journal charges the APC only when the author chooses open access; publishing under the subscription model is usually free.

Other charges and waivers (author guidelines)

Page charges

Charged; see the journal's website for the amount

Submission fee

Charged; see the journal's website for the amount

The journal's website is authoritative for fees; sources were observed at different times and each keeps its own value, without averaging.

Excerpts are quoted from the journal's website; "model summary" lines are written by Workers AI and checked against the text. The journal's website is authoritative.

Publisher

Elsevier

ISSN

0147-5967

Electronic ISSN

1095-7227

Society / sponsor

Association for Comparative Economic Studies

Official links

• Journal homepage ↗OpenAlex
• Submission system ↗Publisher website
• Special issues ↗Publisher website