Marc F. Bellemare Posts

Come work with me! My department is looking for an Assistant Professor in the area of Food and Agricultural Economics, ideally with a side of econometrics. Here is the text of our ad on Job Openings for Economists:

The Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities seeks to fill a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in food and agricultural economics. The Applied Economics Department has a distinguished record in food and agricultural economics in both research and teaching.

This position includes responsibilities for research, teaching, and leadership related to Food and Agricultural Economics (F&AE) with a strong emphasis in the application of econometric methods to food and agricultural issues. Possible areas of specialization within F&AE include (i) agricultural finance, (ii) agricultural risk management, (iii) the economics of food, health and nutrition, (iv) the economics of food insecurity, and (v) public policy as it relates to the F&AE areas just enumerated. The University of Minnesota has multiple programs of excellence across campus in the areas of agricultural sciences, environment and natural sciences, public health, and public policy with whom faculty in Applied Economics collaborate. The Department offers both graduate (MS and PhD) and undergraduate degrees. Its graduates have gone on to successful careers in academia, research organizations, government, and the private sector.

Candidates must have a PhD, or expect to complete a PhD by the end of August 2022, in Economics, Applied Economics, Agricultural Economics, or related fields. Preferred qualifications include strong training in economic theory and econometrics, an established publication record in food and agricultural economics, evidence of high quality teaching, and a strong commitment to the advancement of diversity and equity goals. The successful candidate will be expected to publish regularly in high quality journals, provide high quality teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels, supervise graduate student research, and seek external grant and contract funding.

Applications should be submitted by December 15, 2021 for full consideration. A COMPLETE application will include an application letter, CV, diversity statement, transcript, research paper, and contact information for three references. To view the full position description and application instructions, visit http://employment.umn.edu and search for job #344470.

I am chairing the search committee and am happy to answer any and all questions via email.

For the past year, Jeff Bloem, Sunghun Lim, and I have been hard at work on a chapter for the forthcoming volume 6 of the Elsevier-North Holland Handbook of Agricultural Economics on agricultural value chains in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We finally managed to finish writing a draft of it, and so I thought of posting it here. I apologize in advance for any oversight on our part. Given the comprehensive nature of those chapters, and given our blind spots, and given that this is not the pre-print version and that it will be going out to reviewers for comments, we welcome any and all comments if you have them.

Here is the abstract:

We present an overview of the literature on agri-food value chains in low- and middle-income countries. Starting from farmers’ decision of whether to move away from subsistence agriculture to participate in agri-food value chains, we study the process whereby agricultural commodities make their way from the farm-gate to the final consumer, documenting the procurement relationships that arise and the organization of markets at every step of the way. In each step, we take stock of the empirical evidence, critically assess the research so far, and offer a number of directions for future research. We further discuss the challenges and opportunities for global agri-food value chains.

Writing one of these chapters is a lot of work, especially right on the heels of writing a book. Given that, I expect I will be going back to writing plain-old articles for the foreseeable future.

If you subscribe to this blog via email, you may have noticed that this blog has been relatively quiet for the past year or so.

That’s because I have been working a book titled Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School―But Didn’t, which will be published by MIT Press in May 2022.

The book covers writing papers, giving talks, navigating peer review, finding funding, doing professional service, and advising students.

As such, long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with some of the contents of the book (an early version of chapter 2, on writing papers, for instance, can be found here), but much of the book will feature new material.

I wrote that book to foster equity and level the playing field in economics, but a lot of what I discuss is also applicable to other quantitative social sciences (e.g., business, political science, public policy), and so the book will be useful to researchers in those disciplines as well.

Pre-orders drive the attention a book receives in terms of promotion from the publisher and from book sellers, and so if you feel so inclined, consider pre-ordering the book if you think it will be useful to you or someone you know; the book is relatively cheap at $25 for the paperback version, or $19 for the Kindle version. Here is the Amazon pre-order link; see here for alternative options.

(With apologies to those who have seen this announcement before, either on Twitter or via the #OARES mailing list.)