Welcome to the Spring 2024 Purdue Agricultural Economics Report! This year is the fourth installment of the Graduate Student Research edition, where we showcase the work of master’s and doctoral students in the Department of Agricultural Economics.

The 2023-2024 academic year has been a time of change within the graduate program. In the first article of the issue, interim graduate program chair, Dr. Carson Reeling, and MS-MBA director, Dr. Brady Brewer, share a “State of the Agricultural Economics Graduate Programs,” covering leadership transitions, awards, and placements of graduating students.

In the remainder of the article, we highlight graduate student research across several topic areas. The first section focuses on the outlook and management of family and agribusinesses. Joshua Strine discusses trends in agricultural job openings using unique data obtained from scraping job posting websites. William Walls interprets results from the Small Business Values Survey to show factors that might explain differences in income across family businesses. After collecting data at Purdue’s annual Top Farmer Conference, Margaret Lippsmeyer shows correlations between producer sentiment and farm resilience. Turning to the broader sector, Binayak Kunwar analyzes the firm financial health of publicly traded agribusinesses, looking at financial ratios.

The next section turns to topics relating to the environment: conservation practices and carbon. My article examines three incentive programs for the adoption of conservation practices. Morgan Mastrianni models another kind of incentive mechanism: carbon-linked bonds. Finally, we close the issue with two papers focused on modeling organization and market structure. Yi Wang explains the WIC program as it pertains to infant formula and how market structure may influence the surplus for players within the system. Dewey Robertson utilized the GTAP framework to evaluate the impact that Mexico’s proposed GMO ban might have on the corn trade.

On behalf of the editorial team, I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the body of work produced by the graduate students of Purdue’s Department of Agricultural Economics. Thank you for taking the time to engage with the PAER.

Megan N. Hughes

Ph.D. Candidate

2024 Graduate Editor, PAER