Speaker and Panel Member Biographies
James Binkley is a professor in the department
of agricultural economics at Purdue University, with a focus on econometrics.
His primary area of interest is marketing, especially as it applies to
food retail. Recent research is concentrated on consumer food choice both
at the supermarket and in restaurants. Current research also focuses on
nutrition, especially as it relates to obesity.
Oral Capps, Jr., is professor and holder of
the Southwest Dairy Marketing Endowed Chair in the department of agricultural
economics at Texas A&M University. Dr. Capps is a nationally and internationally
recognized leader in demand analysis, specializing in working with large
databases. Applied research areas include analysis of expenditure patterns
of prepared foods and foods eaten away from home; analysis of health and
nutrition issues, uses of scanner-derived information for managerial decisionmaking
in food retailing; unilateral price effects of mergers and acquisitions;
and analysis of regional, national, and international markets for the
agricultural, agribusiness, and financial sectors. Dr. Capps has authored
102 referred journal articles and co-authored two books. He served on
the editorial board of the American Agricultural Economics Association,
was past president of the Food Distribution Research Society, and is currently
a seminar leader for the National Association of Business Economics and
the Institute of Professional Education. He has served or is currently
serving as a consultant to many firms. He has received awards and honors
for teaching and/or research efforts from Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University, the Texas A&M University Association of Former
Students, and the American Agricultural Economics Association, the Food
Distribution Research Society, the American Council on Consumer Interests,
and the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. Dr. Capps received
a Ph.D. in agricultural economics, an M.S. in statistics and an M.S. in
agricultural economics, and a B.S. in mathematics, all from Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University.
Cesar Costantino is a graduate student
at the University of Maryland and is in the process of completing his
doctoral dissertation. His research focuses on consumer decisions inside
the supermarket and uses scanner data to evaluate advertising and promotional
effects.
David E. Davis is an economist
in the Food Markets Branch of USDA's Economic Research Service. His current
research interests include the industrial organization of food markets,
economic geography of the food system, and geographic variation in food
prices. Other interests include research into the labor market implications
of deregulation of the Class I railroad industry, and the competitive
conditions of the cattle industry. Dr. Davis received his Ph.D. from the
University of Oregon, and has been with the Economic Research Service
since 2001.
Tirtha Dhar is an assistant professor at the
University of British Columbia and was formerly a research associate with
the food system research group at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
His research interests include empirical models of business strategy and
consumer choice applied to marketing and industrial organization, modeling
of channels of distribution, applied econometrics, and the food processing
and food retailing industries.
J. Michael Harris is an economist at USDA’s
Economic Research Service (ERS). He has worked with scanner data for 16
years at ERS and is a member of the food markets branch of the food and
rural economics division. Dr. Harris’s current areas of emphasis
include consumer demand, price analysis, the demand for food product attributes,
and prepared foods. He holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the
University of Illinois.
Daniel Hosken is the deputy assistant director
for the Division of Economic Policy Analysis in the Federal Trade Commission’s
Bureau of Economics. Dr. Hosken has analyzed retail scanner data in a
number of antitrust investigations (including FTC vs. Staples/Office Depot
and FTC vs. Swedish Match/National Tobacco). He has a Ph.D. and an M.A.
from Cornell University and a B.A. from Oberlin College. His current research
interests include retail pricing in food and gasoline markets and demand
estimation.
Helen Jensen is professor of economics and
head of the food and nutrition policy research division in the Center
for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
Her major areas of research are food demand, the economics of food safety
and food hazard control options, food assistance and nutrition policies,
and food security. In CARD, she leads a research program on economics
of food programs and policies, including food safety. Previous research
included studies on the effectiveness of commodity promotion and role
of commodity advertising on consumer demand. Dr. Jensen recently served
as chair of the food safety and nutrition section of the American Agricultural
Economics Association, and she has served on several National Research
Council committees for the National Academies of Science, as well as expert
panels related to food safety, food insecurity and hunger, and food programs.
She holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin.
Harry Kaiser teaches and conducts research
in the areas of price analysis, marketing, policy, and quantitative methods.
He has written many journal articles, research bulletins, and numerous
books or book chapters on these topics. His primary research focus is
on the social implications of agricultural demand and supply policies
aimed at improving producers’ economic welfare. Since 1994, Mr.
Kaiser has served as director of the Cornell Commodity Promotion Research
Program. Much of his research focuses on the marketwide economic effects
of commodity advertising and promotion programs. Currently, he and his
staff conduct annual economic analysis required by Congress for advertising
programs for dairy and fluid milk processors. He was also involved in
the first research that investigated the economic impacts of climate change
on the U.S. agricultural sector. Mr. Kaiser served as editor of Agricultural
and Resource Economics Review from 1999-2001 and is currently on the
executive board of directors of the American Agricultural Economics Association.
Walter Lane is the chief of the branch of consumer
prices at the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
He has been at the forefront of BLS analysis evaluating the use of scanner
data in the calculation of price indices.
Ephraim Leibtag is an economist
with USDA’s Economic Research Service, researches retail food prices
and the dynamics of retail food markets. His research interests include
tracking, forecasting, and analyzing trends in retail food markets and
his work is used in presentations to government officials, policy analysts,
the research community, and other public audiences. He has conducted radio,
newspaper, and magazine interviews on retail food price trends. Dr. Leibtag
received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland and has
been employed at the Economic Research Service since 2001.
Jeffrey Perloff is a professor of agricultural
and resource economics at the University of California at Berkeley. His
economic research covers industrial organization, marketing, labor, trade,
and econometrics. He has consulted with nonprofit organizations and government
agencies (including the Federal Trade Commission and the Departments of
Commerce, Justice, and Agriculture) on topics ranging from product dumping
to social programs. He has also conducted research in psychology. Dr.
Perloff is a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association.
He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago. He was previously
an assistant professor in the department of economics at the University
of Pennsylvania.
Marshall Reinsdorf is a senior research
economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
His research interests and expertise include analysis and modernization
of price indices as well as work in index number theory, consumer demand
measurement, and productivity measurement. He has also evaluated technical
aspects of the Consumer Price Index, Producer Price Index, Import and
Export Price Indexes, and Consumer Expenditure Survey programs.
Mick Silver is a professor of economic statistics
and head of the quantitative analysis group at Cardiff Business School,
Cardiff University, U.K. His main research interest is in prices: both the modeling of price variability and the measurement of price changes. A particular focus is the extraction from price change measures those changes due to quality changes. Mr. Silver has published many papers and
has also contributed chapters to the forthcoming International Labour
Organization (ILO) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) manuals on consumer
and producer price indices. Mr. Silver was recently an American Statistical
Association/National Science Foundation senior research fellow at the
U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics and visiting scholar at the IMF. He has
acted as consultant at the governmental and intergovernmental level to
many international agencies, including ILO, IMF, the World Bank and Eurostat.
In the U.K., he has consulted on several projects for the U.K. Office
for National Statistics. He has written a book on business statistics,
and he is also a chartered statistician of the Royal Statistical Society.
Steven Yen is an associate professor at the
University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Dr. Yen's research interests
include food safety and nutrition, consumer economics, health economics,
and applied microeconometrics.
 Return
to workshop agenda
|
