Members in the News: Dorfman, Michelson, Maertens, Ellison, and Haniotis

Jeffrey Dorfman, University of Georgia Business Lessons From My Father Written by Jeffrey Dorfman: Forbes - December 5, 2018 My father died recently and amid all the reminiscing and catching up with his old work colleagues at his service, I decided it might be worth a column to collect some business lessons I learned from him. My hope is that readers find these useful in their own lives, whether in business or just life in general. As background, my father, Paul Crane Dorfman, was an international banker, specializing in credit risk management and credit decisions. He started working on problem loans, trying to help companies fix their own businesses so his bank could get paid back. Then he began to approve new loans, first in California, then in Europe, the Mideast, and Africa, and next in Asia. After that, he oversaw the bank’s overall credit portfolio, deciding how much the bank should lend in total to specific industries, countries, and regions. (If you are interested, you can find more details about his life and career here.) These jobs meant he gained experience in the weeds of troubled businesses, learned to evaluate companies accurately for new credit decisions, and had to keep abreast of global and sector-specific economic trends. (Continued...) Read more on: Forbes Hope Michelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Annemie Maertens, University of Sussex Brenna Ellison, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign A Promising New Study for the Fertilizer Industry in Tanzania By: Borgen Magazine - November 28, 2018 A group of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign made the decision to travel to Morogoro, a town in Central-Southern Tanzania, to address the burgeoning suspicion among farmers that fertilizers were ineffective and potentially dangerous. The group collected 300 samples of fertilizer from local markets. At first glance, the samples lent credence to the fears of the farmers. Hope Michelson, one of the researchers from the team, told the Borgen Project that the samples “looked absolutely terrible – clumpy, dirty, wet, powdery.” However, once the samples were sent to multiple labs for testing, only 2 of the 300 samples failed to meet the generally accepted quality standards for that type of fertilizer. Michelson said, “We were quite shocked when lab results started coming in showing that the agronomic quality – the nitrogen – was absolutely fine.” (Continued...) Listen to the audio on: Borgen Magazine Hope Michelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Annemie Maertens, University of Sussex Bringing research down to earth By: Evidence Matters - December 5, 2018 The experience of the team in Malawi also raises questions about who the data belong to and whether it would have been ethically irresponsible to refrain from sharing the data over any period of time with the soil owners for the larger public good of research. A core principle of impact evaluation is that the evidence we generate should be used to improve the lives of participants. The standard model for how this is supposed to happen can be circuitous: the evidence will make its way to someone with decision-making power over the fate of the programme being evaluated, and based on that evidence, the decision-maker allocates resources in a way that makes constituents better off. And by all means we should continue striving to make that model work as often and as effectively as possible. But we should also be on the lookout for more direct routes for research to benefit those who participate. With inputs from the research team: Hope Michelson, Eric Kaima, Christopher Phiri, Wezi Mhango, and Annemie Maertens (Continued...) Read more on: Evidence Matters Tassos Haniotis, European Commission Agriculture ‘unevenly targeted’ in EU carbon crunch – commission official By: AgriLand - December 5, 2018 Speaking to AgriLand at a seminar on the future shape of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2020 in the EU Commission in Brussels, Tassos Haniotis, director for strategy, simplification and policy analysis, acknowledged that the agri sector shoulders significant criticism from consumers. “I will give an example, agriculture is 2% of the overall economy, it’s 40% of land use and 100% of food. “As a sector that contributes roughly 10% to emissions, it is treated differently to the focus on that 2%, 40% and 100%. “That 100% goes to consumers; but yet, it’s put into a different dimension in comparison to what is happening in transport or other areas,” said Haniostis. (Continued...) Read more on: AgriLand

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*Articles in response to the AAEA Communicating Out Strategy Press Releases highlighting: Government Relations, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, Choices Magazine, General Media, and/or 2018 AAEA Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.