I’m a current Econ student at Cal.
First of all, you cannot switch to Haas. It’s impossible. It’s also very difficult to take upper division UGBA classes until your last semester (or two) due to how restricted the enrollment for those classes are so don’t expect to be able to take any accounting courses here.
With regard to the curriculum: Econ here is more math-based compared to the curriculum at the other UCs.
Even further than that, we break the major down to (essentially) two different tracks. There first one is a general track (consisting of Econ 100A/B, Econ 140, and Stats 20) which is similar to UCSBs program without the accounting emphasis. The second one is a math-intensive track (consisting of Econ 101A/B, Econ 141, and Stats 134) which approaches the curriculum from more of an applied math perspective and is closer to UCLA’s Econ/Math joint major rather than a traditional Econ major. The former is less intense, but the latter is significantly better for grad school.
Like you mentioned, IMHO, the biggest concern with Econ at Cal is it’s capped and impacted status. There are strict declaration and GPA requirements in place and more than a third of all Econ pre-admits are weeded out after the first semester. In that sense, the pressure to just get into the major can be overwhelming. Also while there are similar majors for those weeded out such as Political Economy and Environmental Economics & Policy, but none of ones available to you here really fit with your intended goal.
As far as the campus vibe, it’s sort of a competitive “chill”. We kind of accept that everyone is constantly trying to one-up each other but at the same time it’s like we learned to live with it and take the time to enjoy ourselves as well. In a nutshell, it’s like…you’ll get beat up and bruised but not broken and you’ll be okay with it.
To me the biggest pro for Cal Econ is the quality of the professors. I’m the type of person that does better with a better lecturer, so one of my biggest concerns coming into Cal was the wide usage of Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) instead of professors for discussion sections. While my fears did prove very true and I definitely had my fair share of bad GSIs, the quality of the Econ faculty here more than made up for it. Listening to lectures from the likes of Robert Reich, Martha Olney, and David Card definitely live up to the hype.
My suggestion? Definitely visit Cal. If you don’t get wow-ed during the visit then, based on your goals, it sounds like UCSB is the safer bet.
(Keep in mind though that your major does not equal your future occupation nor your long term career.)