Jayson Lusk

Jayson Lusk is Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. He has a BS in Food Technology and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Kansas State University. He was previously Regents Professor and Willard Sparks Endowed Chair in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University and Assistant Professor at Mississippi State and Purdue.

Lusk is a food and agricultural economist who studies what they eat and why they eat it. Since 2000, Lusk has published more than 270 journal articles in peer reviewed journals, including several of the most cited papers in the profession. He has served on the editorial councils of eight academic journals including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Food Policy. He was elected to and served on the executive committees of the Southern Agricultural Economics Association, the Western Agricultural Economics Association, and most recently the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association for which he served as president. Lusk was named a fellow of the AAEA in 2015.

In 2007, Lusk co-authored a book on experimental auctions and coauthored an undergraduate textbook on agricultural marketing and price analysis. In 2011, Lusk released a book co-authored with Bailey Norwood on the economics of farm animal welfare and also co-edited the Oxford Handbook on the Economics of Food Consumption and Policy. In 2013 he published the popular book, The Food Police. His latest popular book is Unnaturally Delicious: How Science and Technology are Serving up Super Foods to Save the World.