Why is breakfast so expensive? This blog post first appeared in the C-FARE newsletter for March 2025. Grocery prices are back in the headlines.  Food inflation […]

Econo'food potluck 2025, back home edition Our 11th annual class potluck was back at home! To see the context, check out posts on previous events featuring delicious contributions […]

Professors and others teachers often know more about their students’ family backgrounds than vice-versa. That’s part of the job. Teachers need to know when a student’s family life poses an obstacle that calls […]

After three years of you-know-what, we returned for a 9th edition of the econo’food potluck last week. One change for the 2020s is being more intentional about in-person events, which in this case took the form […]

Like most others in higher education, I’ve responded to students’ pandemic stress by figuring out how to do things more flexibly over space and time. For example, this Spring 2022 class can be attended in person […]

A big part of teaching is kvelling about one’s students: sharing pride in their accomplishments. This morning I learned that a paper with seven student co-authors was accepted for publication. Writing the paper […]

I just updated my favorite one-slide picture of change since the early 1970s:

You may want to click on the image to enlarge it — or go directly to see the latest data in this format at […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 a […]

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 — […]

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 […]

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 […]

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:

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 […]

Many organizations have stepped up with amazing resources on COVID-19 impacts and responses around the world. Here’s a set of links I’ve found helpful that might be of use for students, faculty and staff around […]

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 […]

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 […]