Trust me, the UK ranking league table have not a clue on what the actual standing for economic research is in UK. Time, this year, have ranked certain economic departments in the top 20 which considered quite mediocre in academic economics.
And the RAE 2001's result is so outdated that it's useless.
If I were you, I would easily choose Manchester over Leeds. Any university that have economics under their business school, to me, shows a lack of dedication to economic research. In addition, the very fact the program from Leeds is applied is a more of a reason to choose Manchester. An applied program is useless if you want to do PhD economics later onwards. And I speculate Manchester enjoys much better prospect in employment than Leeds. Don't worry about the MSc being to theoretical. If finance industry values applied program over theoretical ones then they wouldn't be hiring LSE/UCL/Warwick/Oxbridge Master students. The fact that you can handle a theoretical program shows, I believe, intellectual strength to employers.