Abstract Purpose Study how economic parameters affect positions in the Academic Ranking of World Universities’ top 500 published by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Graduate School of Education in countries/regions with listed higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach The methodology used capitalises on the multi-variate characteristics of the data analysed. The multi-colinearity problem posed is solved by running principal components prior to regression analysis, using both classical (OLS) and robust (Huber and Tukey) methods. Findings Our results revealed that countries/regions with long ranking traditions are highly competitive. Findings also showed that some countries/regions such as Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy, had a larger number of universities in the top positions than predicted by the regression model. In contrast, for Japan, a country where social and economic performance is high, the number of ARWU universities projected by the model was much larger than the actual figure. In much the same vein, countries/regions that invest heavily in education, such as Japan and Denmark, had lower than expected results. Research limitations Using data from only one ranking is a limitation of this study, but the methodology used could be useful to other global rankings. Practical implications The results provide good insights for policy makers. They indicate the existence of a relationship between research output and the number of universities per million inhabitants. Countries/regions, which have historically prioritised higher education, exhibited highest values for indicators that compose the rankings methodology; furthermore, minimum increase in welfare indicators could exhibited significant rises in the presence of their universities on the rankings. Originality/value This study is well defined and the result answers important questions about characteristics of countries/regions and their higher education system.

中文翻译：

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一个国家/地区的经济地位是否会影响其大学在国际排名中的地位？

摘要目的研究经济因素如何影响上海交通大学教育研究生院在列出高等教育机构的国家/地区中公布的世界大学500强学术排名中的排名。设计/方法/方法所使用的方法充分利用了所分析数据的多变量特征。通过使用经典（OLS）和鲁棒（Huber和Tukey）方法在回归分析之前运行主成分，可以解决所造成的多重共线性问题。结果我们的结果表明，具有悠久传统的国家/地区竞争激烈。研究结果还显示，德国，英国，加拿大和意大利等一些国家/地区的大学排名靠前，比回归模型预测的要多。相反，对于一个社会和经济绩效较高的国家，日本通过该模型预测的ARWU大学数量要比实际数字大得多。同样，日本和丹麦等在教育方面进行大量投资的国家/地区的成绩也低于预期。研究局限性仅使用一个排名的数据是本研究的局限性，但是所使用的方法可能对其他全球排名有用。实际意义该结果为决策者提供了很好的见解。它们表明研究产出与每百万居民中的大学数量之间存在关系。历史上一直优先考虑高等教育的国家/地区，其构成排名方法的指标显示出最高的价值；此外，福利指标的最低增长可能会显示其大学在排名中的显着提高。原创性/价值这项研究定义明确，其结果回答了有关国家/地区及其高等教育系统特征的重要问题。