William A. Masters

Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, Tufts University

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 and Bluesky, but still have a few things up on Twitter/X and Mastodon and some photos on 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.  I also maintain a separate teaching blog for my course and new textbook on Food Economics, and another page for my project on Food Prices for Nutrition.

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

  • June 2025 preprint on the monetary costs vs. CO2-eq. emissions of healthy diets worldwide
  • June 2025 preprint on the impact of least-cost diet papers in Food Policy
  • 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 
  • Mar 2025 article on adequacy of food supplies for healthy diets, in Global Food Security
  • 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
  • Jan 2024 preprint on retail prices and environmental impacts
  • 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 on nutrient flows globally, 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
  • Oct 2021 article on child growth in Burkina Faso, in AJCN
  • Oct 2021 article on Food Compass nutrient profiling, in Nature Food
  • Sept 2021 article on price data availability, in Food Policy
  • Sept 2021 article on measuring resilience, in GFS
  • Sept 2021 article on food systems & nutrition, in AJCN
  • Aug 2021 textbook (4th ed.) on Economics of Agricultural Development
  • June 2021 brief on cost of preparing a basic meal for the UN FSS
  • June 2021 report on true cost accounting for the UN FSS
  • June 2021 article on food preferences in Viet Nam, in Appetite
  • May 2021 article on cost-effectiveness of food interventions in GFS
  • Mar 2021 article on global nutritional inequality in Nature Food
  • Feb 2021 article on restaurant menu item descriptions in AJPM
  • Jan 2021 article on topic selection and research ethics in AEPP
  • Jan 2021 book chapter on agriculture and undernutrition, for IFPRI
  • Dec 2020 article on seasonality of diet costs in Science Advances

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