Member Blog: David Zilberman

 In Appreciation of Richard Just

Richard was arguably the leading Ag economist in the world in last quarter of the 20^th to  early 21^st century until his retirement. He was my dissertation advisor, and a life-long friend and collaborator. On July 30^th, 2025, several of his students and colleagues assembled with Richard and his family to celebrate his career. It was an emotional event, and I learned a lot about the history of agricultural economics, especially in Berkeley and Maryland, and of course, about Richard, his family, and friends. 

Richard was born on a farm in Oklahoma, where his parents were part of a close-knit Mennonite farming community. After going to school and excelling at Oklahoma State, his professor there, Vernon Eidman, recommended that he apply to Berkeley, vouched for him to the department, and he was in. In his three years at Berkeley, he took classes from Professor George Kuznetz and David Blackwell and graduated within three years to return to Oklahoma State. Richard pioneered the econometric research of risk behavior in agriculture. He developed a methodology to assess supply response based on adaptive expectations, showing that government programs and support counter the impact of acreage restrictions on food supply. This result was much ahead of its time.

The department at Berkeley, which was historically the leading agricultural economics department, had fallen on hard times. Its national ranking fell to 11^th and there was a debate whether to close it. I was accepted into the department and four months after agreeing to come, I was told that the department may be closed (fortunately, two weeks later I learned that the department would still operate). When I came to Berkeley, I found a department with enthusiastic students and mostly elderly faculty. The two stars of the department, de Janvry and Schmitz, were on sabbatical. I was fortunate to work with one of the visiting professors, Eithan Hochman, and to take excellent classes from Economics and from George Kuznets in the department. 

The heart of the department was the coffee room, which hosted bridge tournaments and discussion of economics near the blackboard. We were ambitious to publish and make a difference, and when Andy Schmitz visited, his message was, “Yes, we can!” Indeed he published with one or two students in major journals. Still, we needed technical help and it was cursed. However, the Chairman of the department at the time, Jim Boles, led an effort to keep the department going and we got a new position – given to Richard Just. 

Richard’s hiring was the start of the revival of the department. Richard enabled us to reach our potential. He spoke to the students and realized that we needed help in terms of modeling and econometrics. Together with Rolon Pope, he produced several classic papers that enabled us to estimate production relationships under risk, introducing the notion of the Just-Pope production function. He spent days and nights with Gershon Feder estimating the likelihood that different developing countries would go bankrupt. Actually, they predicted that Mexico, Argentina, and others will default in late 70’s and early 80s, and provided early warnings – but to no avail. Just, working with Schmitz and Feder, produced some of the earlier models on firm behaviors under risk when future markets are available. I worked with Hochman on the economics of pollution and waste management. After Hochman left, Richard replaced him as the project director. He helped us to bring several papers to fruition and he (and Joe Moffitt) suggested a different modeling approach that showed in essence that pollution taxes are more efficient than standards when farmers can trade in pollution rights. Together, we published a paper on policies to control randomly occurring mishaps, showing that taxes are preferable to subsidies when the probability of mishaps is low, but subsidies for risk reduction are preferrable when these probabilities are high. This was an incredibly productive period. I remember that Andy Schmitz suggested expanding international trade models to consider intermediaries (exporters or importers), in addition to producers and consumers. Richard and I did the math, and we published paper in the prestigious American Economic Review. The three of us were among the first economists to publish in Science magazine.

The drastic increase in productivity following Richard’s arrival eliminated the risk of closure of the department and led to hiring of new faculty including Michael Hanneman, Peter Berck, Alexander Sarris, Irma Adelman, and Gordon Rausser. Gordon was hired as Chair and he changed the mode of operation of the department. While we were operating as free agent economists, he realized that we must continue to publish in economic journals, but we are first, and utmost, an agricultural and resource economics department. He initiated a total remake of the graduate program where the department offered classes in theory and econometrics in the fields of environment, development, agricultural policy and trade, strengthened our undergraduate program and the department rose from #11 in the Ag Econ rankings to #1. Just was crucial in convincing Gordon to come to Berkeley and they worked together in leading the department. They also worked together on research with one of their papers showing that futures markets performed better in predicting prices than large commodity price forecasting (so why pay for the use of this model?). They also developed a quantitative analysis framework for policy modeling in agriculture and food that was a key element in our policy program.

 Much of Richard Just’s work in the 1980s in Berkeley was on welfare economics, production economics, and technology adoption. With Andy Schmitz and Darrell Hueth, he wrote a seminal book on applied welfare economics. The book provides a clear foundation to understanding the notion of consumer and producer surplus and multiple applications for how to apply these notions to multiple policies. Richard, Hochman, and I collected data on land allocation and productivity of 200 farms in the Israeli desert. We have data on allocation of land and output of different crops, and total use of inputs (fertilizer and water). We developed a method to estimate input use by individual crops and the relationship (production coefficients) between inputs’ use and output. Richard used the same data, with Bob Chambers, to estimate the production coefficients using the dual approach (which assumes that farmers maximize profits). Later on, Richard, Hochman, and I used a behavioral approach (that assumes farmers have simple rules to allocate resources) to estimate another set of production coefficients. We were surprised to find that the behavioral approach predicted many choices of farmers better than the optimization approach. Working with Richard on these topics was a lot of fun. When we were in Israel, we enjoyed driving in the sands in the desert, and in California we frequently wrote our papers while sailing on the Bay and having a break at Angel Island. 

 The work on technology adoption yielded perhaps the most cited paper in agricultural economics. Gershon initiated the project as part of his work at the World Bank. I read the literature, and it opened for me an exciting area of research. The adoption literature was relatively new in economics, and it needed a conceptual understanding and framework for measurement and estimation, which is what we tried to do. We emphasized that new innovations may appear in packages (green revolution crop varieties require fertilizer and irrigation), that factors like risk, education, and biophysical conditions affect where and when technologies are adopted. Richard’s contribution established principles for estimation that result in efficient data usage. Richard and I continued to work on adoption and developed a conceptual framework to understand adoption under risk. Farmers may diversify their land among different crop varieties, considering both the average yields and the risks of different crops. We had many dissertations in Berkeley that applied these models of adoption and diffusion both to crops, labor markets, and other areas in developing countries.

The period between 1970s to 1980s revolutionized agricultural and resource economics. The discipline has established stronger theoretical foundations and adopted more rigorous quantitative tools. It has expanded to incorporate environmental considerations and analysis of economic development. Much of this revolution occurred at Berkeley and Richard Just was a major force behind it. 

In 1985, Richard left Berkeley to go to Maryland. It was tough for me because I missed our camaraderie, collaboration, and the sailing. Richard’s transition to Maryland contributed to making them an agricultural and resource economics powerhouse comparable to Berkeley and Davis. The Maryland team included the late great Bruce Gardner, Berkeley graduate Bob Chambers, Erik Lichtenberg, Darrell Hueth, Nancy Bockstael, and Ted McConnell. I continued to work with Richard and visited Maryland frequently, enjoying playing basketball with Richard and the faculty. In Maryland, Richard continued to make major contributions. His seminal paper with Calvin and Quiggin, based on a big survey, suggests that farmers participate in government crop insurance because of the subsidy and because they are especially vulnerable to risk (adverse selection), not because of risk aversion. In another paper, Richard and Quinn Weninger brilliantly develop tests for whether crop yields are normally distributed and find with empirical data that the normal distribution is a good approximation for the distribution of yields of major crops. Richard continued to work on adoption and contributed to methods to understand farmers’ adoption behaviors in developing countries, finding that observed behavior can be explained by a combination of multiple approaches. He also wrote one of the best papers to explain changes in land prices, and developed a creative framework to understand the interaction between cultural and environmental policies.

Richard served as the chairman of the department at Maryland, and excelled in this role, as in other activities, enabling the department to grow and support students under tough conditions. He continued to mentor outstanding scholars, including Quinn Weninger, Melinda Smale, and Ariel Ortiz-Bobea. Richard, with Ortiz-Bobea, wrote an excellent perspective on how to assess the impact of climate change in agriculture, taking into account adaptation and technological change. This led to a recent study that suggests that increased investment in research and development is needed to counter the impact of climate change on agriculture, without which we will suffer from migration and food insecurity. Cornell agricultural economist and UC Berkeley graduate David Just is another contribution of Richard’s legacy to agricultural economics. David is an excellent applied economist on his own, and the father and son wrote an excellent joint paper together, of course on the econometrics of risk in agriculture. 

Richard has had a rich life outside of the academy. He and his wife Janet have motorcycled tens of thousands of miles together throughout North America. They have been dedicated and supportive parents and grandparents. Richard has always been a spiritual person, with a strong commitment to his family and his church. Richard and Janet spent two years as missionaries starting at 2015, and he retired upon returning. He is allocating his time to his large family and his spiritual pursuits. Richard Just has been a transformative figure in agricultural economics, making the discipline more rigorous and relevant. He has been a mentor, a friend, and colleague, and I look forward to interacting with him in the future.