Professor of Applied Economics and Idaho Wheat Commission Bill Flory Endowed Chair in Risk Management, University of Idaho
My research examines how commodity markets behave under uncertainty, and how risk management tools and policy can help market participants navigate volatility. The work falls into four streams:
Detecting speculative bubbles and price explosiveness in grain and food markets, and building price forecasts that hold up during rapid economic change.
How producers hedge, how risk premiums form in commodity futures, and which marketing tools reduce the price risk growers carry.
Natural gas and shale dynamics, energy policy uncertainty, renewable energy policy, and fertilizer price spikes that ripple through to farm input costs.
Food price inflation, consumer willingness to pay for food safety and new technologies, and how the dairy sector is approaching net-zero goals.
My work has been supported by more than $4.4 million in grants as PI or co-PI, including a USDA NIFA AFRI grant on sustainable dairy supply chains toward net zero (2024–2028), a USDA NIFA REEU program training undergraduates in commodity marketing and risk management (2024–2029), a USDA NIFA CARE grant on marketing and risk management strategies for Idaho grain producers (2023–2026), cooperative agreements with USDA ERS on price forecasting, and National Science Foundation support for modeling food–energy–water systems.