Definitely agree ag econ is worth looking into. I have an ag econ PhD and have never had a time where I felt that I would have gotten an opportunity or job if only my degree was in general econ. I don’t think it is looked down upon by general econ people except that it pigeon holes you into agricultural/environmental/development/natural resource issues. If you are sure that you want to work in those areas, then I don’t see the down side. The caveat is that top programs in ag econ are considered worse than top schools in econ, so if you get into to Chicago/Yale/Harvard/MIT econ, that’s definitely a better degree than ag econ Berkeley/Davis/Purdue/Maryland/etc. It also happens to be the case that some of the top ag econ schools have higher ranked econ programs (e.g. Berkeley econ is ranked higher than Berkeley ag econ). But Berkeley ag econ is still considered to be more prestigious than a lot of general econ programs, so I would not say that ag econ as a field is looked down on. Fwiw in my program, we took a lot of the same classes as the general econ and there was a nontrivial amount of cross-program advising.
Berkeley Ag econ, at least in my day 15-20 years ago, was very focused on modelling consumer behaviour, quant marketing, and industrial organisation. It was sort of “Ag in name only”.
Definitely agree ag econ is worth looking into. I have an ag econ PhD and have never had a time where I felt that I would have gotten an opportunity or job if only my degree was in general econ. I don’t think it is looked down upon by general econ people except that it pigeon holes you into agricultural/environmental/development/natural resource issues. If you are sure that you want to work in those areas, then I don’t see the down side. The caveat is that top programs in ag econ are considered worse than top schools in econ, so if you get into to Chicago/Yale/Harvard/MIT econ, that’s definitely a better degree than ag econ Berkeley/Davis/Purdue/Maryland/etc. It also happens to be the case that some of the top ag econ schools have higher ranked econ programs (e.g. Berkeley econ is ranked higher than Berkeley ag econ). But Berkeley ag econ is still considered to be more prestigious than a lot of general econ programs, so I would not say that ag econ as a field is looked down on. Fwiw in my program, we took a lot of the same classes as the general econ and there was a nontrivial amount of cross-program advising.
Berkeley Ag econ, at least in my day 15-20 years ago, was very focused on modelling consumer behaviour, quant marketing, and industrial organisation. It was sort of “Ag in name only”.