Four NDSU economists were invited to present research findings at the Allied Social Scientist Association meeting Jan. 3-5 in San Francisco. The annual meeting includes participants from economics, finance and other social science disciplines.
“Although the timely nature of the topic was one factor in the invitation decision, the selection committee recognized the sustained high quality of the research team,” says Cole Gustafson, NDSU biofuels economist.
Gustafson was the lead organizer of the session, titled “Crisis in U.S. Financial Markets – Spillover and Recovery Prospects in Rural America.” The NDSU economists discussed three papers in the session. The topic was proposed in early 2008 before the national financial crisis unfolded during the remainder of the year.
In the first paper, Gustafson and Saleem Shaik, agricultural risk, policy and production economist, developed a national model of rural real estate values and described the relative importance of general economic, agriculture and biofuels public policy. Their results showed that biofuel policy, farm income and nonfarm transfer payments were important determinants of real estate values in rural areas.
In the second paper, Dae-Heum Kwon, research assistant professor, and Won Koo, professor and director of the Center for Agricultural Policy and Trade Studies, described the interdependence of macro and agricultural economic policies. They found exchange rates and federal fund policy to be most important.
A third paper involving researchers from Nevada and the USDA discussed the implications of the financial crisis on local school funding. Vice presidents from the Federal Reserve Banks of Minneapolis and Kansas City provided remarks that introduced and wrapped up the session.