Where should you go to graduate school in agricultural and natural resource economics?

1. Iowa State U
2. North Carolina State U
3. U Wyoming
4. Harvard U
5. Yale U
6. UC Santa Barbara
7. MIT
8. U Rhode Island
9. Georgetown U
10. SUNY Binghamton
11. Stanford U
12. U Colorado, Boulder
13. Utah State U
14. RPI
15. U Connecticut
16. UC San Diego
17. Rutgers U
18. Brown U
19. U Wisconsin, Madison
20. Georgia State U

Source (APT Online link):

Therese C. Grijalva and Clifford Nowell, A Guide to Graduate Study in Economics: Ranking Economics Departments by Fields of Expertise, Southern Economic Journal, Volume 74, Issue 4, pp. 971–996 (April 2008)

Abstract: Ph.D. programs in economics are ranked overall and by subject field. The results provide insight to students researching graduate programs in economics in specific subject fields. Results indicate that (i) differences in overall research productivity measures diminish as a university's rank declines; (ii) a university ranked highly in a particular subject field may be the result of a single, extremely productive faculty member; and (iii) many programs outside the traditional top 20 programs are ranked high in specific subject fields.

This list doesn't pass the smell test since U Maryland, UC Davis and UC Berkeley should be in the top 5 according to perceptions and other objective rankings. Someone with a dog in that fight should read the article closely to see why U Maryland falls down the list. My guess is the authors excluded Department of Agricultural Economics faculty and focused on Department of Economics faculty only (the clue is in the paper's title). This sample selection makes OK sense if you want to provide information to students who want to avoid the aggie stigma* but, warning, you'll be missing the best agricultural and resource economics departments.

In the overall rankings we have these interesting results ... interesting only in terms of bragging rights amongst Boone, NC-based economists (non-USA schools are unranked):

17. Ohio State U
30. North Carolina State U
40. UNC, Chapel Hill
45. U Washington
61. U Wyoming
62. U Arizona
63. U Kentucky
70. U Massachusetts, Amherst
73. U South Carolina
80. U Delaware
82. U Missouri, Columbia
104. West Virginia U

*Note: Some of my best friends are aggies.

Comments

[Tim Haab]

This makes me sad.

[SC]

As someone who is starting an aggie PhD this fall, I almost choked on my coffee this morning when I saw this. If John is right about the paper's methodology, it seems eqivalent to setting the football BCS poll according to the strength of your basketball team.

[John Whitehead]

SC,

I think a better analogy is setting the BCS football poll without the SEC schools.

The remainder of the JEL field rankings should be fine.

[SC]

Point taken. I was just referring to the ag and resource rankings.

But I think what you meant to say was "...without the Big 10 schools."

[John Whitehead]

Weird. I just counted them and there are 11 schools in the Big 10! Weird.

[John Mashey]

re: Big Ten:

When my alma mater Penn State joined the Big Ten years ago, I think the Big Ten figured it had too much brand equity to change its name, but if you look carefully at the logo, you will find a cleverly-embedded "11".

[J.S.]

This is ridiculous and why I hate rankings. Sorry, if UC-Berkeley isn't near the top this is junk. And yeah, I graduated from there.

[J.S.]

This is ridiculous and why I hate rankings. Sorry, if UC-Berkeley isn't near the top this is junk. And yeah, I graduated from there.

[TJR]

With all due respect aren't you being extremely parochial. I thought we had some of the best agricultural economics faculties of the world, in Australia. In my own State, University of Sydney or University of New England would have to rank as some of the best in the world. Not having been at university for a while I will not swear on them but it was only a few years ago that I was still dealing with them and they were still exceptionally good. I think Australian agricultural economics is a step ahead of American universities primarily because it is straight applied Micro economics using small country assumption for world markets. I think you will be adopting this approach in the future.

[Bates]

several of those schools in the list don't even have ag. econ departments, so how can they top the list for ag econ? (I'm looking at you GA State.)