Career Advice from a Statistician- 'Econ is a cartel'

From Columbia Statistics Blog (emphasis mine);

You also ask about getting a Ph.D. in statistics or political science or economics. My general impression is that, to teach in a department of X, it helps to have a Ph.D. in X. But some people can do a lot of statistics in a poli sci or econ dept, or vice versa. My other impression is that econ is a cartel. The individual econ professors I know are, without exception, nice people and excellent colleagues who do interesting and important research. But the field as a whole seems so competitive, I would think it could be an unpleasant setting to be in, academically. Statistics (and, to a lesser extent, political science) seems much less competitive to me. Substantively, much of the interesting and important work in applied economics is statistical, and my impression is you'd be better prepared to do the best work there if you come at it from a statistical background.