About
I am Northrop Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota, where I also direct the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy. I currently serve as one of four co-editors of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Prior to that, I served as one of two co-editors of Food Policy from 2015 to 2019. My research focuses on agricultural economics and applied econometrics. For my research, I have won the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association’s (AAEA) Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2007, the AAEA’s Outstanding American Journal of Agricultural Economics Article award in 2011, and the AAEA’s Quality of Research Discovery awards in 2014. That same year, I also won the European Association of Agricultural Economists‘ Quality of Research Discovery Award. My work so far been featured in media outlets such as The Economist, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Wall Street Journal. In May 2022 my first book, titled Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School―But Didn't will be published by MIT Press.
Featured Work
Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School―But Didn’t
Newly minted research economists are equipped with a PhD’s worth of technical and scientific expertise but often lack some of the practical tools necessary for “doing economics.” With this book, economics professor Marc Bellemare breaks down the components of doing research economics and examines each in turn: communicating your research findings in a paper; presenting your findings to other researchers by giving a talk; submitting your paper to a peer-reviewed journal; funding your research program through grants (necessary more often than not for all social scientists); knowing what kind of professional service opportunities to pursue; and advising PhD, master’s, and undergraduate students.
With increasing data availability and decreasing computational costs, economics has taken an empirical turn in recent decades. Academic economics is no longer the domain only of the theoretical; many young economists choose applied fields when the time comes to specialize. Yet there is no manual for surviving and thriving as a professional research economist. Doing Economics fills that gap, offering an essential guide for research economists at any stage of their careers.
