IATRC 2021 Speakers

Dr Marcel Adenäuer is a policy analyst at the OECD. He is a member of the team respon­sible for the annual OECD-FAO Agricul­tural Outlook report, partic­u­larly focussing on cereal markets. Next to this he is inter­ested in global land markets, long term devel­op­ments of the agricul­tural sector as well as its role for climate change mitigation. Prior to his position at the OECD he has been senior researcher at the Institute for Food and Resource Economics of the University of Bonn. There he specialised on global agricul­tural sector modelling. He holds a Doctoral Degree from the University of Bonn. Mr Adenäuer is an expert in agricul­tural sector modelling being one of the devel­opers of the CAPRI and Aglink-Cosimo models. In his doctoral thesis he analysed the impacts of the reform of the Common Agricul­tural Policy for sugar from 2006.

Vincent Amanor-Boadu is an agribusiness economics and management professor in the Department of Agricul­tural Economics at Kansas State University, where he teaches both graduate and under­graduate courses. He received his PhD from the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada. He worked as the Director of Research at the George Morris Centre, and as managing director of AgriFood Innova­tions, an agri-food technology commer­cial­ization company he co-founded. He has served on the editorial advisory board of the Inter­na­tional Journal of Chain and Network Science (JCNS) and the editorial board of the Inter­na­tional Food and Agribusiness Management Review (IFAMR). His research encom­passes entre­pre­neurship and strategy, inter-organi­za­tional relation­ships and gover­nance, and the enter­prise of science, including technology commer­cial­ization. In nearly two decades at Kansas State, he has mentored nearly 140 graduate students, acting as a major advisor for nine PhD, 16 MS, and 55 Master of Agribusiness graduates. Vincent serves on a number of corporate boards in the US, Canada, and a couple of African countries. He has also served on the board of the Inter­na­tional Food and Agribusiness Management Associ­ation. He says balancing academics with service to industry ensures his ability to bring real-world situa­tions into his classroom and research-driven evidence to boardrooms.

Dr. Titus Awokuse is Chair­person and Professor in the Department of Agricul­tural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University (MSU). Prior to joining MSU he was Chair­person and Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and Statistics at the University of Delaware. He is an inter­na­tionally respected scholar who has consulted for various national govern­ments, inter­na­tional devel­opment agencies, non-govern­mental organi­za­tions and private businesses. He has taught under­graduate and graduate courses in inter­na­tional trade, agricul­tural and food policy, and applied statistics. Professor Awokuse’s research interests and publi­ca­tions are focused on empirical and policy analyses in the following areas: the growth-enhancing role of inter­na­tional trade and foreign direct investment, poverty reduction effects of changes in global food value chains and policy reforms to market insti­tu­tions, and food security policy. He has published scholarly research papers in leading profes­sional journals in his field. 

Professor Awokuse also made notable contri­bu­tions to the agricul­tural and applied economics profession through his leadership roles and service on various committees, advisory boards, and profes­sional associ­a­tions. He served as journal editor of Agricul­tural and Resource Economics Review from 2007 – 2010. He was a former Chair of the National Associ­ation of Agricul­tural Economics Admin­is­trators (NAAEA) section of the Agricul­tural and Applied Economic Associ­ation (AAEA). He is married and blessed with three children.

Rick Barichello is a Professor (Food and Resource Economics) at the University of British Columbia, working there since his PhD (University of Chicago). He was Head of the UBC Department of Agricul­tural Economics 1988 – 1994, and Director of the Center for Southeast Asia Research (UBC Institute of Asian Research) 2007 – 13 and 2016 – 18. He was Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and Visiting Professor at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, University of California-Davis, Leuven (Belgium), and ISEAS in Singapore. 

He worked for the Harvard Institute for Inter­na­tional Devel­opment in Jakarta 1986 – 1988, and subse­quently on various devel­opment projects in Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Philip­pines, Malaysia, Myanmar, China, Cambodia, Korea, Poland, and Ethiopia. This included farm-level field work focused on agricul­tural projects in Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Ethiopia. 

He was President of the Canadian Agricul­tural Economics Society and awarded the desig­nation of Fellow of that Society in 2008. In 2015 he was named to the Executive Committee of the Inter­na­tional Agricul­tural Trade Research Consortium, and elected IATRC Chair for three years, 2016 – 2018. 

His research has concerned the economic analysis of public policy, partic­u­larly trade and agricul­tural policies and insti­tu­tions, Canadian dairy quota markets, and a variety of agricul­tural devel­opment issues, mostly in Southeast Asia. This devel­opment work focuses on trade policy, domestic farm policies, world food markets, rural labour markets, agricul­tural produc­tivity, the evalu­ation of investment projects, and food security.

Jayson is an Economist in the Agricul­tural Policy and Models Branch in the Market and Trade Economics Division of ERS. He is engaged in a variety of research projects related to policy, including trade, energy and agricul­tural policy.

John Beghin joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2019 as a professor and the Mike Yanney Chair in Inter­na­tional Trade and Finance in the Department of Agricul­tural Economics and the Clayton Yeutter Institute of Inter­na­tional Trade and Finance. John’s teaching, research and outreach programs focus on inter­na­tional agricul­tural trade and non-tariff barriers. John is a faculty fellow with the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at UNL and with the Center for Agricul­tural and Rural Devel­opment at Iowa State University.

Prior to joining UNL, John was a Professor of Agricul­tural and Resource Economics (ARE) at NC State University and Iowa State University. Beghin earned his MSc in agricul­tural economics at NC State and then received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1988. After returning to NC State for 10 years, Beghin went on to Iowa to serve as Director of the Food and Agricul­tural Policy Research Institute and Marlin Cole Professor of inter­na­tional agricul­tural economics at Iowa State University, from 1998 to 2016. Beghin returned to NC State in January 2017 and served as department head for 2 years.

Throughout his career Beghin has held various appoint­ments, worked as a consultant for various organi­za­tions and private clients, and published over 100 articles and book chapters. He is considered an expert in inter­na­tional agriculture and food markets economics. His areas of interest include nontariff measures, trade and the environment, global food security, and policy analysis. His work is widely cited. He is a Fellow of the Agricul­tural and Applied Economics Associ­ation, the main profes­sional associ­ation of agricul­tural econo­mists. John is married to Yalem Teshome, a professor of practice at UNL. They have a daughter named Carla, an economist, who lives in Cincinnati, and 2 ferocious labradoodles, Jack and Jill.

John Bovay is an assistant professor in Food and Agricul­tural Policy. Much of his work focuses on the economics of regulation, with appli­ca­tions to the topics of food-safety regulation, food labeling (including labeling of genet­i­cally engineered food), food waste, and analysis of voting on regula­tions affecting farms and food. He strives to be actively engaged with agricul­tural producers, organi­za­tions, and commodity groups in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic to ensure that these groups have access to timely economic analysis of relevant policies.

Dr. Annelies Deuss is an Agricul­tural Policy Analyst at the Organ­i­sation for Economic Co-operation and Devel­opment (OECD), where she leads the work on agricul­tural trade and manages and conducts economic research on agricul­tural policy issues. She is the OECD repre­sen­tative for the G‑20 Agricul­tural Market Infor­mation System (AMIS) Initiative. Her recent work focuses on public stock­holding policies, agricul­tural export restric­tions, marine trans­portation costs and SPS measures. She also contributes to the annual OECD-FAO Agricul­tural Outlook, which provides market projec­tions for major agricul­tural commodities, and to the Review of Agricul­tural Policies in India. 

Prior to joining OECD, Dr. Deuss was a Visiting Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University and served as an Agricul­tural Economist with the Food and Agriculture Organi­zation (FAO) of the United Nations. Dr. Deuss is a Belgian national. She holds a Ph.D. in Agricul­tural Economics from Cornell University (USA), an M.A in Devel­opment Economics from the University of Bologna (Italy), a M.Sc in Agricul­tural Engineering and B.Sc in Bio-engineering from the Katholieke Univer­siteit Leuven (Belgium).

Charlotte Emlinger is assistant professor at the department of Agricul­tural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. Her research revolves around two main issues: the deter­mi­nants of trade compet­i­tiveness in the agri-food sector and the impact of trade policies on trade patterns. As a member of the Agricul­tural Trade Center at Virginia Tech, she works on several on the impact of recent trade policy shifts (trade war, phase one agreement…) and non-tariff measures on agricul­tural and agri-food trade. In her other research projects, she inves­ti­gates firm’s quality and certi­fi­cation strategy and their impact of export perfor­mance. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Charlotte worked for ten years as an economist at CEPII in Paris. She holds a PhD from Montpellier SupAgro in France.

I am an Agricul­tural Economist at Agroscope (the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research). My research lies at the inter­section of inter­na­tional agricul­tural trade, food safety standards and agri-food policy. I received a Ph.D. in Agricul­tural Economics from the University of Goettingen Germanyin 2020. Prior to starting my current role, I was a Consultant with the Agriculture and Food Global Practice of the World Bank Group. I was also previ­ously a Postdoc­toral Researcher at the University of Goettingen where I worked as a Research Associate at the Centre for Biodi­versity and Sustainable Land Use (CBL).

Alla graduated from Purdue in 2006 with Ph.D. in Agricul­tural Economics and joined the Department of Agricul­tural Economics at Purdue as a Research Economist in the Center for Global Trade Analysis (GTAP). The focus of Alla’s work is on global economic policy issues including trade, land-use, and climate change mitigation policies. She under­takes research using GTAP framework and devel­oping new modeling tools.

Gopinath (Gopi) Munisamy is Distin­guished Professor of Agricul­tural Marketing at the University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, USA, where he conducts research and teaching in inter­na­tional markets, trade and agricul­tural policy. He has published over 100 articles on agricul­tural trade, policy and economic devel­opment. Prior to joining UGA, he was the Director of the Market and Trade Economics Division of USDA’s Economic Research Service (2012−19) and a Professor at Oregon State University (1997−2012). Gopi received a PhD in Agricul­tural and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Xi is a postdoc­toral research associate at the Center for Agricul­tural and Rural Devel­opment at Iowa State University. Her major research fields are agricul­tural economics, trade, and food policy analysis. Xi received her PhD in Agricul­tural and Resource Economics from the University of Connecticut in July 2019. She also holds an MSc and a BSc in Economics from Beihang University, China.

Bernard Hoekman is Professor and Director, Global Economics, at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, where he also serves as the Dean for External Relations. Previous positions include Director of the Inter­na­tional Trade Department (2008−13) and Research Manager in the Devel­opment Research Group (2001- 08) at the World Bank. He served as an economist in the GATT Secre­tariat during the Uruguay Round of trade negoti­a­tions (1988−93).

A CEPR Research Fellow and a senior associate of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab countries, Iran and Turkey, he has been a member of several World Economic Forum Global Future Councils. A graduate of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, he holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.

His research focuses on trade and devel­opment, commercial policy, trade in services, public procurement, design of trade agree­ments, global gover­nance and the WTO.

Kristen Hopewell is the Canada Research Chair in Global Policy in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Her research specializes in inter­na­tional trade, global gover­nance, and devel­opment, with a focus on emerging powers such as China, India and Brazil. She is the author of Clash of Powers: US-China Rivalry in Global Trade Gover­nance (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Breaking the WTO (Stanford University Press, 2016). Her policy analysis has appeared in venues such as The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The South China Morning Post, The Globe and Mail and the BBC. She has held visiting fellow­ships at Peking University in Beijing, the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany, and the Graduate Institute of Inter­na­tional and Devel­opment Studies in Geneva. She is currently a Wilson China Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

Dr. Lee Ann Jackson is the Head of the Agro-Food Trade and Markets Division in the Trade and Agriculture Direc­torate (TAD) at the OECD. She joined the OECD in 2020 after 16 years at the WTO where her most recent position was as Counselor of Food and Agricul­tural Policy Research in the Economic Research and Statistics Division. Dr Jackson manages a team that works to develop and commu­nicate evidence-based advice to govern­ments with the aim of helping them improve the domestic and inter­na­tional perfor­mance of their policies for agro-food trade and markets.

She was previ­ously the Secretary to the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture in the Agriculture and Commodities Division where her respon­si­bil­ities included the imple­men­tation and monitoring of WTO rules on agriculture and multi­lateral agriculture negoti­a­tions. Prior to the WTO, Dr. Jackson held various research roles including as a Research Fellow in the School of Economics at the University of Adelaide in South Australia and a researcher in the Environment Division of the Inter­na­tional Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC. 

Dr. Jackson completed her Ph.D. in applied economics at the University of Minnesota; has joint Master’s degrees in public and private management and environ­mental studies from Yale University.

Keithly Jones supports USDA-Foreign Agricul­tural Service Office of Global Analysis priority projects as a senior economist and develops and maintains expertise in global policy issues. Prior to his recent appointment at the Foreign Agricul­tural Service, Keithly was a senior economist at USDA-Economic Research Service. He led the agency’s research examining import and export demand for meat, poultry, fish and dairy products. His research looks at the influence of various factors including exchange rates, quality, inputs, animal disease, cloning, country of origin labeling (COOL), and trade policy on animals and animal products. His principal respon­si­bil­ities include analysis that provides a perspective of the economic situation and policy environment for meat and livestock trade and he commu­ni­cates this infor­mation to public and private decision-makers. Keithly earned the Secretary of Agriculture Honor Award for Excel­lence twice in 2 consec­utive years — 2011 and 2012. Keithly has completed the Key Executive Leadership Certificate program at American University. This program has equipped him with skills in creating a leadership plan for the future, facil­i­tating and team building, leading in the context of a consti­tu­tional government, leading organi­za­tional change, leading through strategic commu­ni­cation, program goal setting, monitoring and evalu­ation, and leading effective policy implementation.

Dongin Kim is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Agricul­tural and Resource Economics at the University of Connecticut. His research interest is inter­na­tional trade and investment policy evalu­ation. his current research is about foreign direct investment, studying the deter­minant of bilateral investment patterns, and their impact on the labor market and growth, especially in agriculture and food indus­tries. In addition, he leads an ongoing research project funded by USDA-NIFA-EWD, inves­ti­gating the impact of global trade shocks on U.S. agriculture. 

Emilia Lamonaca is a research fellow at the University of Foggia (Italy), where she received her doctorate in Innovation and Management of Healthy Food. Since 2021, she has been awarded the National Scien­tific Habil­i­tation for Associate Professor. 

Emilia Lamonaca has been a grant holder for the OIV in 2019 and the AXA Research Found in 2020. She has authored more than thirty peer-reviewed articles and is coauthoring with more than thirty colleagues from Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, Lebanon.

Her research has been published in top journals such as Journal of Agricul­tural Economics, Land Use Policy, Environ­mental Science & Policy, Journal of Cleaner Production, Health Policy.

Her main research interests include economics of climate change, deter­mi­nants of inter­na­tional trade as well as the role of trade policy and economic geography on trade. She has a special interest in applied econo­metrics and has been focused on the method­ological issues of the meta-analysis.

Sunghun Lim is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricul­tural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech University. His research is in the areas of agricul­tural global value chains, agricul­tural trade policy and political economy, and agricul­tural devel­opment. His recent studies mainly look at the impacts of agricul­tural global value chains on struc­tural trans­for­mation, employment growth, and inter­na­tional agribusiness outsourcing in both OECD and devel­oping countries. He also inves­ti­gates the uninten­tional political outcomes of agricul­tural trade disputes, the US-China trade war in particular. Dr. Lim holds a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota. He received a bache­lor’s degree in Economics and a master’s degree in Agricul­tural and Resource Economics from the University of California-Davis. Prior to joining Texas Tech University, he also researched at the National Food Protection and Defense Institute (FPDI)‘s Global Food Supply Chain team. 

Matias is Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His research and teaching interests are in global gover­nance, devel­opment, human rights, inter­na­tional law and food policy. He has previ­ously held academic positions at the University of Edinburgh, University of Stirling, University of Northern British Columbia and Max Plank Institute for the Study of Societies. In 2010 – 2011, he was the Cadieux-Léger Fellow at Global Affairs Canada.

In addition to his academic research, Matias has extensive profes­sional experience in the field of inter­na­tional policy­making and is a former Canadian repre­sen­tative to the World Trade Organi­zation (WTO), Organi­zation for Economic Cooper­ation and Devel­opment (OECD) and UN Food and Agriculture Organi­zation (FAO). He has also advised the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the Scottish Parliament and consulted for inter­na­tional NGOs and the Brookings Institution.

Will Martin is a Senior Research Fellow at the Inter­na­tional Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and Past-President of the Inter­na­tional Associ­ation of Agricul­tural Econo­mists. Martin’s recent research has focused primarily on the impacts of shocks such as food price changes, COVID-19, and farm programs on poverty and food security. He has also mobilized research teams to examine WTO’s Uruguay Round and Doha Agenda, and China’s accession to WTO. Growing up on an Australian dairy farm when Britain joined Europe showed him the impor­tance of agricul­tural trade-related issues. He trained in economics and agricul­tural economics at the University of Queensland, the Australian National University and Iowa State University. He began his career at the Australian Bureau of Agricul­tural Economics, before moving to the Australian National University and the World Bank. He was the World Bank’s Research Manager for Agriculture for six years before joining IFPRI in 2015.

Taís Cristi­na de Menezes is a PhD can­di­date of the Applied Eco­nom­ics Grad­u­ate Pro­gram at Luiz de Queiroz Col­lege of Agri­cul­ture (Esalq), Uni­ver­si­ty of São Paulo, Brazil. Menezes is also a researcher on the Agri­cul­tur­al Pol­i­cy team at the Cen­ter for Advanced Stud­ies in Applied Eco­nom­ics (Cepea/​​Esalq). Menezes’ research is focused on agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies, ani­mal health eco­nom­ics and inter­na­tion­al trade. Cur­rent­ly, Menezes is a vis­it­ing schol­ar in the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­tur­al and Resource Eco­nom­ics at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty, fund­ed by the Ful­bright Commission.

Dr. Muhammad currently serves on several Advisory Boards, including the Agricul­tural Policy Advisory Committee (APAC), which provides trade policy counsel to the Secretary of Agriculture and U.S. Trade Repre­sen­tative. He previ­ously served as Associate Director of the Markets and Trade Economics Division at the Economic Research Service in Washington, D.C., an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (2016−2018). He also served as Chief of the Inter­na­tional Demand and Trade Branch at the Economic Research Service (2013−2016) where he repre­sented the agency on inter­na­tional trade issues.

David Orden is pro­fes­sor of Agri­cul­tur­al and Applied Eco­nom­ics at Vir­ginia Tech. His research focus­es on the polit­i­cal econ­o­my of agri­cul­tur­al sup­port poli­cies, domes­tic sup­port issues at the WTO and tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers to agri­cul­tur­al trade. He held a joint appoint­ment at the Inter­na­tion­al Food Pol­i­cy Research Insti­tute dur­ing 2003 – 16.

Esteban Rossi-Hansberg is the Glen A. Lloyd Distin­guished Service Professor in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago (since 2021). Previ­ously, he was the Theodore A. Wells ​’29 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Prior to Princeton, he was an Assistant Professor at Stanford University. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2002.

His research specializes in inter­na­tional trade, regional and urban economics, as well as growth and organi­za­tional economics. He has published exten­sively in all the major journals in economics. In 2007, he received the presti­gious Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship and in 2010, he received the August Lösch Prize and the Geoffrey Hewings Award. He is an elected fellow of the Econo­metric Society since 2017 and won the Robert E. Lucas Jr. Prize in 2019.

Fabio Santeramo is Professor in Economics at the University of Foggia and Research Fellow at the European University Institute. He is PI of two major projects on the links between the Agri-food Sector, Trade and Environ­mental Policies, and on the effects of Climate Change, Trade and Economic Inequal­ities. Currently serving as a member of the Executive Committee of the IATRC, his works focus on agricul­tural markets, trade and policies, and have been published on top-field Journals.

Born and raised in Bangladesh , Rakhal completed his B.Sc. Agr. Econ. and M. Sc. at the Bangladesh Agricul­tural University then came to Canada for higher studies leading to a Ph. D. Besides academics, he enjoys music, sports and the splendid Canadian outdoors.

Professor Andrew Schmitz is the Ben Hill Griffin, Jr., Eminent Scholar and Professor of Food and Resource Economics, University of Florida; Research Professor, University of California, Berkeley; and Adjunct Professor, University of Saskatchewan.

Joseph S. Shapiro is Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in Agricul­tural & Resource Economics and the Department of Economics. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, Co-Editor of the Journal of Public Economics, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Research Associate at the Energy Institute at Haas. His research agenda focuses on three general questions: (1) How do inter­na­tional trade policy and environ­mental policy interact? (2) What are the costs, benefits, and incidence of water pollution and other environ­mental policy? (3) How important are the invest­ments that people make to protect themselves against air pollution and climate change? Shapiro has received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and Marshall Schol­arship, and funding from the National Science Foundation and the Environ­mental Protection Agency. He was previ­ously Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Yale. Shapiro holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, Masters degrees from Oxford and LSE, and a BA from Stanford. 

Dr. Sheldon’s primary research interests are in analyzing inter­na­tional trade and policy. Recent projects include exami­nation of the inter­action between trade and environ­mental policies; analysis of the effects of exchange rate volatility on inter­na­tional trade flows; exami­nation of the effects of policy on trade in ethanol; and analysis of China’s exchange rate policies. He is currently working on issues related to carbon tariffs, and also the impact of intel­lectual property rights on US seed exports. Dr. Sheldon has recently completed a term as Chair of the Inter­na­tional Agricul­tural Trade Research Consortium, and also served as Featured Articles Editor of Applied Economic Perspec­tives and Policy from 2010 to 2013, and he was elected as a Fellow of the Agricul­tural and Applied Economics Associ­ation (AAEA) in 2019. 

Dr. Sheldon serves as Ohio State’s Andersons Chair of Agricul­tural Marketing, Trade and Policy. In this role, he oversees the Andersons program, which focuses on research and outreach in the area of inter­na­tional trade and public policy. 

Sharon Sydow is a Senior Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE). In OCE, her focus is on providing economic analysis of agricul­tural trade policies and market devel­op­ments. She began her career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1991 at the Economic Research Service (ERS), where she was hired as the grains and oilseeds analyst for the Soviet Union. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, her research focused on agricul­tural trade and policy reform in Russia and other former Soviet countries. In 1998, she moved to USDA’s Foreign Agricul­tural Service (FAS) to work on multi­lateral trade negoti­a­tions at the World Trade Organi­zation (WTO). In 2001, she was named Director for Agricul­tural Trade Policy in the Office of the U.S. Trade Repre­sen­tative (USTR), where she worked on a number of bilateral and multi­lateral agricul­tural trade issues. After several years of private sector work on agricul­tural trade issues, she returned to USDA in 2015 to work in OCE. She received her B.A. from Miami University (Ohio) and a Masters in Inter­na­tional Affairs from Columbia University, where she also attended the W. Averell Harriman Institute for the Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Konstan­tinos G. Syren­gelas is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Agricul­tural and Applied Economics of Virginia Tech. He earned his BSc from the Agricul­tural University of Athens (Department of Agricul­tural Economics and Rural Devel­opment) and his MSc from the Department of Agricul­tural and Resource Economics of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His research interests concern the impact of animal diseases and adverse weather on agricul­tural and food trade, the evalu­ation of economic integration agree­ments and their functioning as trade volatility absorbers or atten­u­ators, and the consumer prefer­ences and willingness-to-pay for charac­ter­istics of agricul­tural and food products. He has published two journal articles.

Stefan Tangermann was until end-2008 Director for Trade and Agriculture at the Organ­i­sation for Economic Co-operation and Devel­opment (OECD), Paris. He is now professor emeritus at the Department of Agricul­tural Economics and Rural Devel­opment, University of Göttingen, Germany.

Before joining the OECD in 2002, Mr Tangermann was a professor of economics and agricul­tural economics at the univer­sities of Frankfurt/​Main and Göttingen. His academic work has concen­trated, among other topics, on the need and options for reforming agricul­tural policies in OECD countries, and on strength­ening the rules for agricul­tural trade, with a particular emphasis on the WTO.

Mr Tangermann is a Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Human­ities and was President of the Academy from 2012 to 2016. For a long time he was a member of the Scien­tific Advisory Council of the Federal Ministry of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture in Germany and also a member of the Science Council of Germany. He was awarded the Order of Merit, First Class, by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Mr Tangermann is a Fellow of the European Associ­ation of Agricul­tural Econo­mists and of the German Agricul­tural Economics Associ­ation. He has advised several govern­ments and inter­na­tional organ­i­sa­tions and continues to do so.

Mr Tangermann is a German national. He is married and has four children.

Jinyang is a fifth-year Ph.D candidate in the Department of Agricul­tural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. He is also pursuing a simul­ta­neous Master’s degree in Data Analysis and Applied Statistics in the Department of Statistics. He is an applied econo­me­trician, with a focus on inter­na­tional trade and food and health economics. His research projects in trade includes evalu­ating the effects of tariff and non-tariff measures on agricul­tural trade.

Xiting is a doctoral student in the Department of Agricul­tural and Resource Economics at the University of Connecticut. His research interests lie at the inter­section of inter­na­tional trade, environ­mental policy, and economics of social problems. He is partic­u­larly inter­ested in evalu­ating the environ­mental impacts of trade policies, with a specific focus on Chinese environ­mental trade policies. Xiting’s current work also assesses the trade impact of the global maritime trade concerning various global supply chain, environ­mental, and political issues.