Research Fellows

Julian M. Alston

Julian Alston is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics of the University of California, Davis and Associate Director, Science and Technology, of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center. He teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in microeconomic theory and the analysis of agricultural markets and policies. Prior to beginning in his current position in 1988, Dr. Alston was the Chief Economist in the Department of Agriculture in Victoria, Australia. His experience in public policy analysis and advice, and administration of a large scientific organization shaped Dr. Alston's research interests in the economic analysis of agricultural markets and public policies concerning agricultural incomes, prices, trade, and agricultural research and promotion. He is a coauthor of Making Science Pay: The Economics of Agricultural R&D Policy and Science under Scarcity: Principles and Practice for Agricultural Research Evaluation and Priority Setting. Alston was raised on the family farm in northern Victoria, Australia. He is a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association and a distinguished fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

Matt Andersen

Matt Andersen is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wyoming. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 2005. Matt teaches econometric theory and agricultural finance at the University of Wyoming. Prior to his current position he was a research associate with InSTePP at the University of Minnesota, and with the University of California, Davis. His primary research interests include productivity analysis, production economics, and the economics of R&D related to U.S. agriculture. As a research associate with InSTePP he helped develop a comprehensive database of production accounts in U.S. agriculture. The database is currently being used to track the productivity of U.S. agriculture, and to help estimate the economic returns to public investments in agricultural R&D in the United States.

Eran Binenbaum

Eran Binenbaum received his undergraduate degree from the University of Amsterdam, an MA from the University of California, Riverside, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Eran is currently a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide. His main research interests are in the economics of innovation, research policy, economic methodology, industrial organization, logical structures for complex choice problems, and multi-disciplinary expert systems.

Shereen El Feki

Shereen El Feki is the presenter and editorial advisor of People & Power, a twice weekly current affairs programme on Al Jazeera International, the new 24-hour global English-language news channel to launch in 2006. From 1998 to 2005, she was Healthcare Correspondent at The Economist, writing on biomedical research, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, international public health, biomedical ethics, intellectual property rights and agribusiness. Dr El Feki regularly comments on such issues on radio and television, including CNN, BBC and National Public Radio. Her award-winning writing also appears in The World in 2006, Prospect magazine, and the Public Library of Science Medicine. Dr El Feki is a senior fellow of the 21st Century Trust, a trustee of Sense About Science and a consultant to the World Economic Forum; she also sits on the expert panels of several initiatives on the future of the healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry. Dr El Feki holds a BSc. from the University of Toronto, as well as an MPhil in biochemistry and a PhD in molecular immunology from the University of Cambridge.

Terry Hurley

Terrance (Terry) Hurley is an Associate Professor in Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He graduated from Iowa State University with a Ph.D. in economics in 1995. His primary research interests lie in understanding and managing risk from a public policy perspective as well as from an individual perspective. In the public policy arena, Terry has been an active participant in the debate surrounding regulatory policy toward genetically modified crops. Due to his expertise, Terry was invited to serve on the FIFRA Scientific Advisory Panel that evaluated European corn borer active Bt corn for continued registration by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2000. His expertise has also resulted in numerous invitations to speak and participate at workshops on the regulation, risks, and benefits of genetically modified crops in the U.S. and Europe.

Jennifer S. James

Jenni James received her PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California at Davis. Her research interests include agricultural policy, the effects of agricultural research on agricultural productivity, and consumer demand. She is currently working with InSTePP colleagues on an econometric study to evaluate the returns to agricultural research while allowing for spillover effects and alternative specifications of knowledge stocks. Another current project measures the similarity among countries and regions in terms of agro-ecological resources and agricultural production.

Jenni's past research has evaluated the effects agricultural policies have on the quality of commodities produced. In addition, she has written several papers with Julian Alston and John Freebairn that examine the incentives created by commodity boards, and the extent to which the resulting advertising and research budgets differ from what would be socially optimal. In her studies of consumer choices, Jenni has collected data using surveys, market experiments, experimental auctions, and stated choice instruments. Most of her consumer studies have focused on technological characteristics of food products, and have included as applications biotech corn, organic apple products, and milk with various levels of pasteurization.

Bonwoo Koo

Bonwoo Koo is an assistant professor in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998, and has worked at the University of California in Davis and at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC. His principal areas of research include the economics of R&D and intellectual property rights, licensing and contracting, science and technology policy, and the economics of biotechnology.

Frikkie Liebenberg

Frikkie Liebenberg is an Agricultural Economist at the Institute for Agricultural Engineering (IAE) of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) of South Africa, Pretoria. In 1977 he joined ARC's Development Impact Analysis group as a Senior Researcher engaged in policy analysis and assisting in the implementation of a series of institutional change initiatives implemented by the ARC and the Department of Agriculture. Since 2003 Frikkie has been stationed at the IAE where he has been mainly involved in research and training on research monitoring and evaluation methodologies, some in collaboration with the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR). His research now focuses on evaluating the economic performance of successive research regimes in South Africa and the changing roles and effectiveness of R&D institutions in fostering innovation and growth in South African agriculture. Prior to joining ARC he worked at the Western Cape Department of Agriculture, with earlier stints as a senior researcher on the Agrifutura Project at Stellenbosch University and an economist at the Directorate of Marketing of the South African Department of Agriculture.

A South African citizen, Frikkie earned both his BSc (Agric) and MSc (Agric) in Agricultural Economics at the University of Pretoria and a Master degree in International Agricultural Marketing at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in Great Britain. He is currently finalizing a PhD at Pretoria University wherein he is measuring long term productivity growth in South African agriculture (beginning in 1910) and assessing the contribution of research and other factors to that growth.

Carol Nottenburg

Dr. Nottenburg is a patent lawyer specializing in biotechnology. She migrated to law after a career in science. Her career path took her from undergraduate days at Caltech (B.S. Biology) to graduate work at Stanford University (Ph.D. Genetics), to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in the laboratory of Dr. Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate, and ultimately to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) in Seattle, Washington, where she joined the faculty of the Clinical Division. For five years, her laboratory studied the causes for poor development of the immune system in patients following bone marrow transplant. Carol then turned to the pursuit of a career in law, and particularly in patent law. After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Puget Sound Law School (now Seattle University Law School), she joined the law firm of Seed and Berry in Seattle, Washington. There she had primary responsibility for a number of small biotech company clients, and her practice focused on integrating patent strategy with business strategy. A move to CAMBIA, a non-profit, private research institute, in Australia allowed Carol to become involved in policy issues surrounding intellectual property. Besides being responsible for intellectual property matters at CAMBIA, she spearheaded the development of the internet-based Patent Lens Resource (www.patentlens.net). Now in private practice again, Carol aims to assist clients in integrating patent strategy with business purposes and to strengthen the client's capacity to deal with both everyday and more esoteric patent matters.

John Nyman

John A. Nyman is a health economist and Professor in the Division of Health Services Research and Policy, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. His recent research interests include the development of a new theory of demand for health insurance. This theory decomposes moral hazard into efficient and inefficient portions, and has important implications for health care policy. Dr. Nyman has also conducted research into nursing home behavior and long-term care policy, cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis-both in theory and practice, and the behavior of physicians. He is currently developing a new research program in gambling as a public health issue. Dr. Nyman's research and theory papers have appeared in almost all of the prominent health economics and health services research journals. A recipient of the 2005 Schuman Excellence in Teaching Award, he teaches classes in health economics, cost-effectiveness analysis, and health insurance. Dr. Nyman received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mark S. Paller

Dr. Mark S. Paller is Assistant Vice President for Research, Academic Health Center and Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He established and directs the clinical trials office (the Research Services Organization) and has responsibility for the Biomedical Genomics, Bioinformatics, Molecular and Cellular Therapy, Research Animal Resources, clinical research and AHC intramural grant programs. Recently, he has played a key role in developing the research Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics between the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic.

Paller received his medical degree at Northwestern University, performed an internal medicine residency at Case Western Reserve University and a nephrology fellowship at the University of Colorado, and received a Master's degree in Administrative Medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is internationally recognized for his research of the cell biology of acute renal failure.

C. Ford Runge

C. Ford Runge is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota, where he also holds appointments in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Department of Forest Resources. He is also Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy.

A native of Wisconsin, he received his Ph.D. in agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin, his M.A. in economics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and his B.A. at North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He has served on the staff of the House Committee on Agriculture, and as a Science and Diplomacy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, working in U.S. AID on food aid and trade. In 1985, he served as Chairman of the Governor's Farm Crisis Commission, structuring recommendations on farm credit and land markets in Minnesota.

In 1986 he was awarded an International Affairs Fellowship by the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1987 was selected as a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and Ford Foundation Economist. He spent 1988 as a special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in Geneva, Switzerland, working under Trade Representative and former Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter. In 1988 he was named a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and in 1990 a Fulbright Scholar for study in Western Europe. From 1988-91, he served as the first director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. During 1991, he did research on European trade reform and environmental policy as a Fulbright Research Fellow, visiting at the Universities of Padova (Italy) and Dijon (France). He has consulted for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, the Ford Motor Company, Monsanto, the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, and the Wilderness Society. He served as an advisory member of the Board of Directors at Land O'Lakes from 1993-98.

His publications include five books, and a wide range of articles concentrating on trade, agriculture and natural resources policy. In 1992, Iowa State University Press published Reforming Farm Policy: Toward a National Agenda, which he wrote with Willard W. Cochrane. In 1994, the Council on Foreign Relations published Freer Trade, Protected Environment: Balancing Trade Liberalization and Environmental Interests. In 2003, Johns Hopkins University Press published Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization. He is married and lives in Stillwater with his wife Susan, daughter Elizabeth, and son Carl. He owns and operates a small farm in Wisconsin.

Vernon Ruttan

Vernon Ruttan is a Regents' Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Economics and Applied Economics and an Adjunct Professor in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He attended Yale University (BA, 1948) and the University of Chicago (MA, 1952; PhD, 1954). He has served as a staff member of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1961-63) and as President of the Agricultural Development Council (1973-78).

Ruttan's research has been in the field of agricultural development, resource economics, and research policy. He is the author of Agricultural Research Policy, (University of Minnesota Press, 1982); (with Yujiro Hayami) Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (Johns Hopkins Press, 1985); Technology, Growth and Development: An Induced Innovation Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2001). and Social Science Knowledge and Economic Development (University of Michigan Press, 2003.). His most recent book, Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? Military Procurement and Technology Development, will be published by Oxford in 1996.

Ruttan has been elected a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association (1974); American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1976); the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1986); and to membership in the National Academy of Sciences (1990). He has been awarded honorary degrees from Rutgers University (1978); Christian Albrecht University of Kiel (1986), and Purdue University (1991).

Ed Schuh

G. Edward Schuh is Regents Professor and Director of the Orville and Jane Freeman Center for International Economic Policy in the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. He also has joint appointments in the Departments of Economics and Applied Economics. Schuh has contributed internationally as an educator, researcher, administrator, and author in the fields of economic development, international trade and exchange rate policy, and agricultural policy. His work has involved extensive international involvement, with emphasis on Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Middle East. He is the author or co-author of six books, has edited another six books, and has over 150 scientific and technical papers to his credit. Schuh has held various policy positions and served as Dean of the Humphrey Institute for ten years. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was recently recognized by the Brazilian government with the equivalent of the U.S. President's Medal of Freedom - the highest award the Brazilian government gives - for his lifetime contributions to Brazil's agricultural institutions.

Vince Smith

Vincent H. Smith is Professor of Economics in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University and co-director of MSU's Agricultural Marketing Policy Center. He received his Ph.D from North Carolina State University in 1987 and his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Manchester in 1970 and 1971. He has been a faculty member at MSU since 1988. His current research program examines agricultural trade and domestic policy issues, with a particular focus on agricultural science policy, domestic and world commodity markets, risk management, and agricultural trade policy. He has authored nine books and monographs and published over 100 articles on agricultural and other policy and economic issues. His work has been recognized nationally through multiple awards for outstanding research and outreach education programs. He spends most of his leisure time with his wife Laura and their two children, Karen and Meredith, and, occasionally, as an enthusiastic amateur on the golf course.

Tony Taubman

Antony Taubman is currently Acting Director and Head of the Global Intellectual Property Issues Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a position he assumed in May 2002, with responsibility for programs on intellectual property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore, the life sciences and related public policy issues. After a diplomatic career, he left the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2001 to join the newly-formed Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture, at the Australian National University in Canberra, teaching and researching on international IP law. He has also held a teaching appointment at the School of Law at the University of Melbourne, delivering a specialist postgraduate course on TRIPS Law and Practice. From 1998 to 2001, he was Director of the International Intellectual Property Section of DFAT, and in that capacity was engaged in multilateral and bilateral negotiations on intellectual property issues, domestic policy development, regional cooperation, and TRIPS dispute settlement. He has taken part in many training and capacity building programs on intellectual property law and TRIPS in Australia and a number of Asian countries. He has authored a training handbook on intellectual property and biotechnology, a comprehensive study on the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement, and a range of academic and general publications on international intellectual property law and policy.

He joined DFAT in 1988 as a career diplomat, and his service included disarmament policy and participation in the negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention, a posting in the Australian Embassy in Tehran as Deputy Head of Mission, and a posting to the Hague as Alternate Representative to the Preparatory Commission for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Chair of the Expert Group on Confidentiality. He previously worked for WIPO from 1995 to 1998, his duties then including development cooperation in Asia and the Pacific, and the development of the revised WIPO program and budget and associated policy development. A registered patent attorney, he worked in private practice in the law of patents, trade marks and designs in Melbourne in the 1980s.

Stanley Wood

Stanley Wood is a senior scientist a the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. He joined IFPRI in 1995 and until 1997 was outposted to the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia working on impact assessment studies for regional agricultural research. Since then he has been based at IFPRI headquarters, where he leads IFPRI's research on spatial analysis in a policy context. Before joining IFPRI, Wood served as an independent consultant to multilateral and bilateral aid organizations on natural resource and agricultural systems modeling. A British citizen, Wood earned his B.Eng. in civil and structural engineering from the University of Sheffield, an MSc in water resources development from the University of Birmingham, and a MSc in agricultural development from the University of London.

Brian Wright

Brian Wright is a graduate of the University of New England, Armidale, Australia, and has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. He then was assistant and associate professor in the Yale University, Economics Department, and is currently Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

His research interests include the economics of commodity speculation and market stabilization, agricultural policy, the economics of innovation and intellectual property rights, with applications in biotechnology. He recently served on a Natural Academies Committee on Intellectual Property in Genomic and Protein Research and Innovation.