Davis was ranked 4th in Economic History according to rankings by Econ PhD.net.
UC Davis Economic History ranking according to the Repec field rankings.
Economic history is still going strong according to this recent study. Highlights of that here.
Previous Davis students who have worked in the field of economic history include Leticia Arroyo Abad (Queen's CUNY), Alan Barreca (UCLA), Matt Curtis (ECARES, Univ. of Southern Denmark, Odense), Doug Campbell, (New School), Sun Go (Chung-An University), Rowena Grey, (UC Merced), Qi Han (SWUFE), Yu "Max" Hao (Peking University), David Jacks(National University of Singapore), Yuzuru Kumon (Manchester), Jason Lee (UC Merced), Gabe Mathy (American University), Sarah Quincy (Vanderbilt), Ahmed S. Rahman (Lehigh), Mark V. Siegler (Cal State Sacramento), Stephen Sun (Hitotsubashi University), Xiaohan Zhang (CSU-LA)
My colleagues in the Economics deaprtment who specialize in economic history are: Katherine Eriksson and Santiago Perez. Emeriti: Greg Clark, Peter Lindert, Alan Olmstead, and Alan M. Taylor. Also, Eric Edwards and Katherine Hauck are in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department and have ongoing research in the area of economic history.
Read more about Economic History at UC Davis.