The department is renowned in the area of agricultural and resource policy. Many of our faculty and students have been on the forefront of policy making at the international, national and state levels. Our policy field combines analytical rigor, quantitative emphasis and relevance. Most public policy analysts focus on only one of the four policy dimensions: incidence, mechanism design, political economy, or governance structures. Members of our department work in each of these areas, developing the theory, applying these models to policy issues and affecting policy change.

     Governments have intervened heavily in agriculture and resource markets, creating a rich environment for policy analysis. These policies are a result of pressures from public and special interests which have the potential of suffering from collective action problems. Issues in agricultural and resource policy encompass questions of farm production, resource use, uncertainty, organizational behavior, political economy, policy design, market behavior, and the effect of agricultural production on the environment. Students in the agricultural and resource policy field will develop sound analytical tools, a rigorous research methodology, and apply them to real world problems including: agriculture, resources, and policy issues generally.