News from AEDE: October 2015
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Letter from Tim Haab, AEDE Department Chair
Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni and Friends-
We are in an exciting and transformational time in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics.
As I hope you can tell from the data presented below, this is a monumental period of change and growth at AEDE.
With fewer faculty, we are serving more students than ever before, and we are serving them with excellence.
Excellence in teaching, excellence in research and excellence in outreach.
Of course with change comes uncertainty, but more importantly, with change comes opportunity. I will never be satisfied saying that what we have always done is what we should always do.
Building on our traditional programs, we are continuing to develop new programs to serve even more students. Some of the change is driven by external forces (budgets, changing societal demands for student education), and some of the change is driven by changes in faces around the halls of Ag Admin. Familiar faces have left, and new faces are being welcomed.
While recognizing our past, AEDE will continue to strive to be one of the most forward-looking departments at Ohio State. I look forward to seeing what the future has to offer and I am committed to doing everything I can do, whether that is big or small, to ensure that AEDE achieves excellence in all that we do.
- Tim Haab, Professor and Chair
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Southgate, Thraen and Zulauf Retire
AEDE bids adieu to three outstanding long-serving faculty members who have recently retired from the department: Cameron Thraen, Douglas Southgate and Carl Zulauf.
Thraen spent over 40 years studying the U.S. and world dairy food industry during his career as a dairy economist. Of note, he recently served as the co-director of the National Program for Integrated Dairy Risk Management Education and Research, a program that developed educational materials and computer software for the dairy industry.
In his retirement, Thraen plans to spend more time with his family, especially his three granddaughters, fish, boat, and play golf. He notes, that "Shelle and I have no plans to leave Westerville, as we enjoy the seasons and this includes the central Ohio winter."
During his time at Ohio State, Southgate specialized in the study of natural resource issues in the United States and around the world. Most recently he served as the associate director of the university’s Subsurface Energy Resource Center, which the university created in September 2011 in response to accelerated oil and gas development in eastern Ohio. His next book – Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs – How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach, coauthored with historian Lois Roberts, will be published in early 2016 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
In his retirement, Southgate hopes to travel, visit his children often, and visit more of this country's magnificent national parks.
Zulauf, an agricultural economist, focused on commercial agricultural policy and commodity futures and options markets during his time at Ohio State. One of the nation's foremost farm policy experts, he has testified before Congress on farm policy and wrote a paper that laid out many of the principles that helped guide development of the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) farm program enacted in the 2008 U.S. farm bill and the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program in the 2014 U.S. farm bill.
In his retirement, Zulauf plans to focus on his family's farm. He will also continue to contribute to the daily agricultural blog farmdoc daily, which is published by the University of Illinois.
All three emeritus professors will maintain close ties to the department.
Thank you to Cameron Thraen, Douglas Southgate, and Carl Zulauf for your many years of service to AEDE!
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Meet AEDE’s Newest Faculty Member: Jon Einar Flåtnes
With the start of the 2015-2016 academic year, the department welcomed a new faculty member to its ranks: Jon Einar Flåtnes, a development economist, who joined AEDE as an Assistant Professor.
Flåtnes, who originally hails from Norway, is a recent graduate of the Agricultural and Resource Economics doctoral program at the University of California, Davis.
Learn more about Dr. Flåtnes in our Q & A with him below.
AEDE: Tell us about the research that you bring to the department.
Flåtnes: I recently graduated with a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis where I was working in international development under Michael Carter.
My research interests are at the intersection of development economics, agricultural finance, and experimental economics. In my work I have employed a combination of theoretical, experimental and empirical methods to study questions related to optimal design of financial contracts for smallholder farmers in developing countries.
More specifically, my dissertation studied the welfare implications of two innovative financial contracts, specifically a joint liability group lending contract with a collateral requirement, and an index insurance contract based on remote sensing data.
I’m very pleased to be continuing this line of research here at Ohio State, and I’m currently involved in two different projects on this topic. The first uses framed field experiments in Tanzania to look at joint liability and index insurance, and the second studies the effects of interlinking the provision of hybrid maize with index insurance in Tanzania and Mozambique.
AEDE: What kinds of courses will you be teaching at AEDE?
Flåtnes: I’m very excited to be teaching two development courses this semester.
One is an undergraduate course in development economics (AEDE 4535), which covers basic concepts in international economic development.
The other course, which I’m co-teaching with AEDE’s Mario Miranda this year, is the first in the doctoral program’s development sequence of courses (AEDE 7421). In this course, we aim to expose students to the key literature in microfinance, experimental economics, index insurance, poverty traps, and agricultural household models, to name a few.
This is my first time teaching a full course, and it’s certainly a new and challenging experience for me but also incredibly rewarding. There seems to be a lot of interest in development economics among the AEDE graduate student population, and as we continue to develop our program, I believe that we have the potential to be one of the most attractive places to study development economics at the graduate level in the world.
AEDE: What attracted you to the world of development economics?
Flåtnes: Having grown up on a small farm in Norway, I have always had a strong interest in agriculture and I took an early liking to finance and economics.
However, it wasn’t until I took a course in development economics during my undergraduate studies at Macalester College in Minnesota that I truly realized how I could use the tools of economics to study some of the most pressing problems in the world today.
After my undergraduate studies, I spent four years working in the mortgage finance industry before embarking on my PhD studies at UC Davis. Prior to starting grad school, I had been very interested in microfinance and rural credit markets, and shortly after passing my qualifying exam, I got involved in a project in Tanzania working with a large microfinance institution called VisionFund Tanzania.
This project provided me with several opportunities to do field work in Tanzania, and the more time I spent talking to farmers, the more I understood the importance, but also the challenges, of designing effective financial contracts. The field work I did in Tanzania with local credit groups ended up forming the basis of my dissertation and has further bolstered my passion for development economics.
AEDE: What advice to you have for AEDE students?
Flåtnes: First, always do what you’re passionate about, and you will have a career that is fulfilling, both personally and professionally.
People will try to give you advice based on their own experiences and career paths but only you know what your strengths and passions are. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not the right choice for you. It’s often convenient to choose a research project because the data is readily available or your advisor already has a project lined up for you, but if you’re not passionate about the idea, you may find yourself miserable and unmotivated three years later.
Second, work closely with your fellow colleagues to get and to provide feedback on each other’s research.
At the beginning of my third year at UC Davis, a few of us got together and created what we called a “dissertation group.” Our group, which consisted of five to six grad students working in development, would meet every week for an hour and a half to discuss our research. Meetings would typically consist of thirty minutes of check-in time, where each person would give a brief progress report, followed by a more extensive presentation by one individual. The process of writing a dissertation can sometimes be both frustrating and lonely, but these weekly meetings helped keep us on track and simultaneously gave us a unique opportunity to learn about what our colleagues were working on.
AEDE: Tell us about what you like to do in your free time.
Flåtnes: Given that I spend my entire week in front of a computer, there’s nothing I’d rather do with my free time than to be outdoors, rain or shine (or snow!).
While Ohio doesn’t exactly have the kind of mountains that I’m used to in California and Norway, I’m excited to explore some of the nearby hiking opportunities.
I’m also an avid cyclist but rather than racing on a fancy road bike, I prefer mountain biking or adventure cycling in remote areas.
Also, being a good Norwegian, I always look forward to the winter, and I hope we get some decent snowfall this year so I can bring out my cross country skis!
September 30, 2015
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EEDS Program and AEDE Student Service Center Changes
The department recently announced changes to the team that supports AEDE student services with a new leadership role for Gina Hnytka and a new undergraduate coordinator role for Holly Hall.
Hnytka has been appointed to a joint role as the Environment, Economy, Development, and Sustainability (EEDS) Program Manager and the Student Service Center Manager.
Hall has been named the Undergraduate Program Coordinator for AEDE.
Launched in 2012, the EEDS undergraduate program has seen overwhelming success over the last three years with over 200 students enrolled in the major to date. EEDS is a joint program of AEDE with Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR). Due to this program growth, the department has restructured management of the EEDS leadership team to provide longevity and a common vision to the program.
In her new role as EEDS program manager, Hnytka will serve as program director of operations and program development for EEDS. As the Student Service Manager for AEDE, Hnytka will be responsible for overseeing the AEDE Student Service Center and managing AEDE student services programs and staff. She will also continue to work with the SUSTAINS learning community on campus.
In her role as Undergraduate Program Coordinator for AEDE's undergraduate program in Agribusiness and Applied Economics, Hall will become the primary contact for all Agribusiness and Applied Economics advising and programmatic needs. Hall will also provide advising services for EEDS Sustainability and Business, and Environmental Economics students.
Additionally, Neil Drobny will serve as the Development and Outreach Manager for the EEDS program.
The AEDE Student Service Center, which launched in early 2014, provides academic support services to all undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in AEDE’s programs. The Center serves as a one-stop shop for all AEDE students and should be the first point of contact for students for all academic questions and needs.
The Center is located in Suite 249 of the Agricultural Administration Building and is usually staffed during normal working hours Monday through Friday, though appointments are recommended (see the Appointment Request Form).
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Ani Katchova Elected to AAEA Executive Board
This content is from a news release published by the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA).
AAEA Elects New Executive Board Member
Dr. Ani Katchova Brings Worldwide Experience to Association Board
Ani Katchova, Ph.D., of The Ohio State University begins her three-year term on the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association’s Executive Board. Dr. Katchova is an Associate Professor and Farm Income Enhancement Chair at the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at her alma mater.
In addition to her work at The Ohio State University, Dr. Katchova served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, was a Fulbright Specialist Scholar and AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, and is the founder of the Econometrics Academy, which offers world-wide education in econometrics.
Before being elected to the Executive Board, Dr. Katchova worked with AAEA as the Chair of the Economic Statistics and Information Resources Committee and currently serves on the Association’s Publications Committee and Government Relations Committee.
“With its culture of engagement AAEA has been the leading organization in our field for networking opportunities and presenting and discussing work with colleagues,” Dr. Katchova said. “We can continue to innovate by using new technology to increase networking and collaboration among AAEA members."
Learn more about AAEA.
September 3, 2015