The JAE's Positioning Within Agricultural Economics: A Text‐Based Analysis

On the occasion of the centenary of the Agricultural Economics Society, this study investigates the positioning of the Journal of Agricultural Economics (JAE) within the broader landscape of the main agricultural economics journals. We employ a quantitative text analysis approach, estimating a Structural Topic Model (STM) on a unique corpus of 13,140 abstracts from the JAE and six leading peer journals covering the period 1970–2024. Our results suggest that the JAE shares common trends with its peers, such as an increasing segmentation and specialisation of the topics addressed, and a commensurate growth in the use of specialised techniques, such as causal identification and experimental economics. At the same time, features differentiating the JAE from the other journals emerge as well. These include a strong focus on production issues and agricultural policy, as well as on the environmental and natural resource implications of production decisions. This contrasts with the relatively lower attention devoted to food and nutrition aspects, despite greater focus on consumption dynamics, in line with a general trend in the discipline. Overall, this analysis highlights that the JAE maintains a strong connection with core aspects of the discipline, while differentiating itself in specific areas of investigation.