William A. Masters

Welcome

Hi – thanks for visiting.  I am a Professor at Tufts University, in the Friedman School of Nutrition with a secondary appointment in the Department of Economics.  For news and event announcements I mostly use LinkedIn, but still have a few things up on Twitter/X, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Instagram.   Timeline below links to recent work, or you can see separate sites with details of research funding, my school page, or fun experiments like music playlists.

Past work is described in my AAEA Fellow’s bio and ANH career journey, and ongoing work is also described on other specialized websites:
— a teaching blog for my course and new textbook on Food Economics,
— a project on metrics and actions to improve food access known as Food Prices for Nutrition,
— a project working with private enterprises on Data Analytics for Food Markets in Africa, and
— a project working with researchers to build a global Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Science-Policy Platform.

Featured readings — an accessible textbook, and an in-depth review of recent literature

Recent scholarly publications — scroll down for earlier years at the bottom of this page

  • Oct 2025 review article on the history of least-cost diet research in ARRE (open access)
  • Sept 2025 preprint on the lowest-emissions and lowest-cost healthy diets worldwide
  • July 2025 article on the impact of least-cost diet papers in Food Policy (preprint)
  • July 2025 article on prices, footprints and nutritional profile of foods worldwide, in AJCN (preprint)
  • May 2025 article on the Healthy Diet Basket standard for health & sustainbility, in Nature Food (code+data)
  • Apr 2025 article (gated) on the Food Economics textbook, in AEPP (preprint and book site)
  • Apr 2025 article on global monitoring of access to healthy diets, in Agricultural Economics (open access)
  • Mar 2025 article on adequacy of food supplies for healthy diets, in Global Food Security (code+data)
  • Feb 2025 article (gated) on least-cost diets for teaching, in J. of Econ. Ed. (preprint + Excel workbook)
  • Aug 2024 article on helping government agencies to monitor diet costs, in CDN
  • June 2024 article on using least-cost diets to track food access, in GFS
  • Jan 2024 article on food trade and retail prices, in World Development
  • Dec 2023 article on temperature and child growth, in AJCN
  • July 2023 bulletin on cost of healthy diets in Ethiopia, from EPHI
  • May 2023 article on global food prices during COVID, in GFS
  • Feb 2023 article on true cost accounting for food, in CDN
  • Jan 2023 book chapter on cost of meal preparation, for UNFSS
  • Sept 2022 article + data & code for nutrient balance sheets from global food flows, in Nature Food
  • July 2022 article on whole-household diet costs, in AJAE (preprint)
  • May 2022 article on food prices during COVID, in Nature Food
  • Mar 2022 article on child growth velocity, in J. of Nutrition
  • Jan 2022 article on variation in diet costs worldwide, in LancetPH

Recent news and media

Recent presentations

Links below list archived news and media, publications and presentations

Archived news and media

Older articles and working papers

Archived presentations

Mastodon