Econ PhD with Concentration in Asian Economy/Political Economy?

[peabrain]

I am a master student majored in Public Policy right now and I would like to pursue my PhD in Economics. Probably due to my administration/policy education background, my research interest is the interaction of economic development, government intervention, and democratic movement in the Asian economies.

However, I am now struggling in searching appropriate PhD programs in Asian Economy/Political Economy. Many people on the forum recommend the political economy programs in Princeton, Harvard, and Standford. Well, these programs are pretty great and I will give a try. I also want to find some less competitive programs (perhaps T10~30). Do you know any other Econ PhD programs which are strong in political economy or have researchers interested in Asian Economy? I find that UCSD is a good choice but sill need more...

BTW, my background is public administration/public policy but curricula including econ and math (e.g. principle of econ, public econ, calculus, linear algebra, probability, statistics, OR). Is this a disadvantage for my application? Or I had better to pursue econ in policy schools...

Any ideas? Thank you!

[AREStudentHopeful]

I'm not up on either PE or Asian economy fields, but I do happen to know that U of Hawaii has an excellent Asian economies/trade group. They would be a good safety for you to apply to (assuming you have the profile to get into a top 10-30). As far as I know they don't have much in the way of impressive academic placements but their government placements in Asian countries is pretty impressive (with high level placements in the Japanese, Thai and South Korean governments that I remember off hand).

[Elliephant]

Columbia has quite a few people working on Asian stuff. Most of the ones I've read have been "China people", but I think there are a couple working on Southeast Asia as well. And I've been told (though I won't go to the bank with this) that Berkeley has some good IPE people. In the top 5 there is also the obvious choice of MIT, which has JPAL - although, admittedly, a lot of JPAL's work seems to revolve around SS Africa.