It’s true that economics is a more popular major at Midd. An earlier post mentioned the Niche ranking. It may be worth noting that Niche’s rankings by major take into account the relative popularity of a major on a given campus. While interesting, it’s debatable whether everyone using Niche rankings would in fact agree that metric should count towards 17.5% of rank. It’s also interesting that while having four times the number of majors (most recent year I found) Midd has only double the Econ faculty. More interesting still, Carleton actually has double the raw Econ PhD count of Midd for 2011-20 (see the NSF’s site) despite being the smaller school with, again, far fewer majors.
Dissecting methodologies of various rankings can be informative if it helps you figure out what you want, but I would advise using them as a starting a point rather than the ultimate decision making criteria (not claiming the previous poster said otherwise). There are legitimate reasons for going to a school with 2x more Econ profs and 4x more Econ students; there are also legitimate reasons to going to a school with an 8x track record (per capita rate) placing into PhD Econ programs.
I think my best advice would be to read the faculty CVs/bios, read the detailed course descriptions, read whatever is on the college’s institutional research pages, and- if possible- visit both schools! The campus or location might very well end up being the thing that sways you most between schools with many similarities.
They are both fantastic colleges, so congratulations on some amazing choices!