Can Field Experiments Return Agricultural Economics to the Glory Days?

As we contemplate the state of academic research in the agricultural economics community, there are two facts that are difficult to overlook.First, over roughly the first half of the twentieth century, scholars working on agricultural issues were the toast of the academy, setting forth an empirical research agenda that served to influence social and natural scientists profoundly.The seminal contributions made in these early years continue to shape important academic and policy debates.A second fact remains that this dominance has waned in the past several decades, with major empirical advances now more likely in sister fields, such as labor economics or industrial organization.One piece of ocular evidence showing this decline is shown in figure 1, which reports the share of papers devoted to agricultural topics in four top economic journals over the period 1911-2000, quinquennially. 1 In the earliest years more than 10% of papers in these four top journals were devoted to agriculture, with that share steadily falling through World War II.The share stayed roughly constant for