Fields of Study

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness

This field examines risk and inventory management, the economics of production and technology, agricultural labor, agriculture and the environment, and other topics related to the production and distribution of food products.

Agricultural Resource Policy and Political Economy

This field examines how government policy is determined and interacts with agricultural and resource markets.

Applied Econometrics

Applied Econometrics is concerned with providing a basis for reasoning and learning from samples of economic data and is used to investigate economic questions from our other fields.

Development

Development economics addresses one of the greatest and most difficult current challenges faced by humanity: how to assist the 80% of the world population located in less-developed countries, and in particular the three billion individuals in poverty, raise their living standards while at the same time preserving the quality of their environments.

Energy, Environmental, and Resource Economics

Valuation and management of the environment; theory and practice of environmental regulation; management of renewable resources; theory of extractive natural resource use; international environmental economics and policy; water resource allocation and management; agriculture and the environment; land use; energy; and global climate change. Critical policy questions concern energy and the environment, biofuels, and exhaustion among others.

Intellectual Property Rights/Biotechnology

Intellectual property rights play a crucial role in biotechnology and shape agricultural, health, and other markets.

International Economics and Trade Policy

Trade between countries, globalization, property rights across borders, foreign investment, and migration are among the critical issues examined in this major.