Posts by: Will Masters
Economic explanations can be like trying to explain why a joke is funny: it takes a long time, and by the end it’s not funny any more. Our explanations can also be like dissecting a frog: it’s weird, and anyway the frog is dead. You get the picture — we can be a Continue Reading →
Aging as gracefully as I can… looking back about ten years, here’s a repost of food economics in doggerel:
http://freakonomics.com/2009/06/04/why-are-kiwis-so-cheap
and also a link to my farewell to Purdue grad students when I moved to Tufts:
http://freakonomics.com/2010/06/10/toward-an-ethical-economics-of-food-policy
This year, my back-to-school week included a lecture for the University of California’s Network on Child Health, Poverty and Public Policy, which had a 3-day multidisciplinary talkfest for UC researchers to share insights about the […]
Premixed, fortified infant cereals are eaten in small quantities but play a big role in the world food system. They were first developed in the 1930s at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (as “Pablum“) then spread quickly to near universal use in nutrition assistance programs, […]
People occasionally send me questions about food. Once before, I posted my responses on this blog — that was about sustainability. This time, the questions were mostly about veganism, and I think you’ll agree that they’re worth answering. I hope I’ve done them justice.
[…]
Our 7th annual econ-of-food class potluck, new and improved: now with an original student recipe!
If the blog post below is too long, don’t read: jump to a small photo album,
or shorter posts from previous years.
Our non-judgmental judges: Sean Cash (at left) and Parke […]
Long post alert!
The short answer to the title question is: Yes, some of the time.
The long story starts with the opening phrase of the first modern textbook on principles of economics. That line, from Alfred Marshall in 1890, defines economics as the study of people’s “actions in the ordinary […]
It’s the first weekend of January — which means the start of job-search season for many 2019 graduates. I recently looked at U.S. employment trends in agriculture and the food system, and here’s what I found:
1. There are many farms, but few farm jobs
The USDA counts about 2 million farms in […]
For Tufts and other schools in Massachusetts, today’s start of the academic year coincides with a primary election for state and federal offices. The campaigns have made some effort at persuasion but most focus is on mobilization: recent elections have been decided mainly by turnout, by which people invest the time and effort needed to […]
Research in nutrition and the health sciences is often kept semi-secret until publication. Why? Does it matter? Scientists in many fields circulate their work in progress as widely as possible, hoping for feedback and citation even before submission to a journal. Institutions run their own working paper series (like the
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