By Leah Costlow & Will Masters
More than 7 months into the pandemic, America remains in upheaval. Massive job losses, disease risks and other disruptions continue to affect almost every American household. What’s happened to jobs and prices in the food system?
Back in […]
One of the hardest tasks in economics is to recognize and understand self-interest without condoning selfishness. There is some evidence that Econ 101 might attract and encourage more selfish behavior, a tragic mistake which the great economist Paul Samuelson described as “
Our start-of-class essays invite students to begin “thinking like an economist” by describing a familiar thing as a three-part story: (a) your own decisions, (b) the decisions of other people with whom you interact, and (c) the rules or technologies that guide interactions. The first step requires only introspection, about our own […]
Right now, around week 3 of the semester, students start formulating their project topics. Here’s the initial project motivation from hospital dietician Andrea Cooper, who wrote:
I work with elderly people at risk of malnutrition. Medically tailored meals could be a lifesaver.
Older adults […]
At this point in the semester, students start formulating their project topics. Here’s an initial description of a potential topic from MNSP student Jieun Wrigley:
The US farm bill is the primary agricultural and food policy tool of the federal government. In 2020 alone, US farmers are likely to receive as […]
A Friedman alum recently sent me a draft plan for how to fix the broken U.S. food system, wondering what I thought of it. That prompted a long response which I’ll share with you here.
If you’re in a hurry — tl, dr: The real culprit behind our food woes is systemic political and […]
Today I did a CELT workshop on what I’ve learned about online teaching at Friedman so far, in a series for faculty to share experiences and lessons learned for the coming year. We had 49 participants from all parts of the university. By coincidence, that’s […]
This semester’s all-school speaker series ended with two panels on COVID-19, first on disease forecasting from Elena Naumova & Ryan Simpson, and then on impacts in ag., food & nutrition from me, Sean Cash and Norbert Wilson.
You can stream the archive […]
The slide deck can be downloaded here. Feel free to adapt & use! Slide #3 is a gif showing spread across countries.
For the full thread on twitter, click below:
For our @TuftsNutrition PhD seminar, a longer updated slide deck on #COVID impacts on agriculture, food & nutrition, starting with […]
Public outreach generally works better on twitter, but here is a blog version of some posts there about COVID-19 in the food system. This virus is tearing a huge hole in the fabric of every society on earth, with a sudden, synchronized loss of life and well-being that makes almost everything harder. With fewer […]
Twitter (click photo for full profile)
- Hey @DrPatrickWebb, any theories on franco-british-us differences in food culture? Fun thread & many other replies… https://t.co/izTLPVGW78 about 3 hours ago
Helpful newsletters
- Boston Network for Intl. Dev.
- Solutions Journalism – stories of success
- Politico – US food & ag policy
- Ag2nut – international nutrition
- Chicago Council – global food & ag
- Farm Policy News – from Univ. of Illinois
- The Counter – ‘Fact and friction in American food’
- Food Safety News – nasty stuff to avoid
- Dani Nierenberg’s Food Tank
- Jeremy Cherfas – food culture
- Gro Intel – deep dives into data
- FERN’s ag insider news
- Econofact – US economic policy
- Rudd Center – obesity policy
- David Allison – obesity research
- ANH Academy – mostly Africa & Asia
Data & resources
- My list of resources (experimental)
- WB DIME data analysis handbook
- JPAL how-to research resources
- USDA Econ. Res. Service (ERS) data
- USDA Food & Nutr. program data
- NCCOR – all US food-health data
- World Bank data
- FAO Statistics (FAOSTAT)
- UNICEF statistics
- WHO – child heights and weights
- WHO – global obesity and BMI
- UN system data
- HDX – humanitarian crises
- The dataverse
- IHSN – household surveys
- IPUMS – accessible data (incl. IDHS)
- Euromonitor – branded foods (library subscription)
- Gro Intelligence data
Favorite bloggers
- Parke Wilde – food policy
- Jess Fanzo – food systems
- Marc Bellemare – ag & food econ
- Chris Blattman – dev econ
- Jayson Lusk – ag & food econ
- Diane Coyle – economics books
- Marion Nestle – food politics
- Tamar Haspel – food & ag
- World Bank – impact evaluation
- BITSS – research methods
- Econofact – US econ policy
- Susan Dynarski – education policy
Archives
- October 2020
- September 2020
- June 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- November 2019
- September 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- January 2019
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- October 2017
- September 2017
- May 2017
- February 2017
- September 2016
- March 2016
- September 2015
- March 2015
- January 2015
- October 2014
- August 2014
- November 2013
- October 2013
- August 2013