From farm management to agricultural and applied economics: The expansion of a professional society as seen through a census of its dissertations from 1951 to 2005

The authors provide a historical census of all 7,967 graduated doctoral students in agricultural economics from U.S. programs between 1951 and 2005. They provide the first comprehensive study of the history and current state of the highest degree of the agricultural economics profession, show how the degree and the journals in which dissertation research is published have changed over time, and discuss how the profession has evolved from farm economics to an agricultural and other applied economics fields.