Jayson Lusk

editor of Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Food Consumption and Policy and co-author of Compassion by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare

February 4, 2012

Jayson L. Lusk is Professor and Willard Sparks Endowed Chair in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University. He has previously served on faculty at Purdue University and Mississippi State University. Dr. Lusk earned a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Kansas State University in 2000 and a B.S. in Food Technology from Texas Tech University in 1997. Lusk conducts research related to consumer behavior and decision making, food and livestock marketing and policy, and non-market valuation. In the last 10 years, Lusk has published 4 books and over 100 articles in peer reviewed scientific journals, and has been invited to present his research at over 25 Universities in the U.S. and abroad.

Lusk currently serves as associate editor for six academic journals including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Consumer Affairs, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. Lusk is past chair of the American Agricultural Economics Association's Food and Agricultural Marketing Policy Section and has served on the executive board of the Western Agricultural Economics Association, the Southern Agricultural Economics Association, and the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

Lusk recently co-authored a book on experimental auctions published by Cambridge University Press and is also a co-author of an undergraduate textbook on agricultural marketing and price analysis published by Prentice-Hall. His 2011 books include one on the topic of animal welfare with Oxford University Press and the co-edited volume: the Oxford Handbook on the Economics of Food Consumption and Policy. He has a forthcoming book entitled Food Police to be released by Crown Forum.

About Compassion by the Pound: For much of human history, most of the population lived and worked on a farm, but today people's information about farm animal is more likely to come from children's books than hands-on experience. When romanticized notions of an agrarian lifestyle meet with the realities of the modern industrial farm, the result is often a plea for a return to antiquated production methods. The result is a brewing controversy between animal activist groups, farmers, and consumers that is currently being played out in ballot boxes, courtrooms, and in the grocery store. Where is one to turn for advice when deciding whether to pay double the price for cage free eggs or in determining how to vote on ballot initiates appearing across the U.S. seeking to ban practices such as the use of gestation crates in pork production? At present, there is no clear answer. What is missing from the animal welfare debate is an objective approach that can integrate the writings of biologists and philosophers, while providing a sound and logical basis for determining the consequences of farm animal welfare policies. What is missing in the debate? Economics. This book journeys back to the earliest days of animal domestication and then forward into modern industrial farms. Delving into questions of ethics and animal sentience, the authors use data from ingenious consumers experiments conducted with real food, real money, and real animals to compare the costs of improving animal care to the benefits. They show how the economic approach to animal welfare raises new questions and ethical conundrums as well as providing unique and counterintuitive results.

About Oxford Handbook: Historically, the challenge for humans has been to secure a sufficient supply of food to stave off hunger and starvation. As a result, much of the research on food and agriculture in the past century has focused on issues related to production efficiency, food supply, and farm profitability. In recent years, however, farmers, agribusiness, policy makers, and academics have increasingly turned their attention away from the farm and toward the food consumer and to issues related to food consumption.

Although research on food demand and consumption has been active for several decades, there are presently few resources to which someone can turn as a basic reference on the economics of food consumption and policy that covers specificities of theories and methods related to the study of food consumers and covers issues in food demand and policy. This book is meant to fill this gap. The book is designed to serve as a useful reference guide to graduate students and academics working in the field of food economics and policy who are interested in the consumer-end of the supply chain, and also to people employed in food and agricultural industries, special interest and activist groups, and policy makers.

The book is divided into three main sections: i) theory and methods, ii) policy, and iii) topics and applications. The first section of the book contains 11 chapters covering the core theoretical and methodological approaches that are used in studying the economics of food consumption and policy. The focus of the chapters is on the application of the theories and methods to food consumption. This second section of the book focuses specifically on policy issues related to food consumption. Several chapters in this section focus on the theory and conceptual issues relevant in food markets, such as product bans and labels, labeling, standards, political economy, and scientific uncertainty. Other chapters hone in on policy issues of particular interest to the consumer-end of the food supply chain such as food safety, nutrition, food security, and development. The final section of the book turns attention to particular issues and topics related to the economics of food consumption and policy. These chapters are largely empirical and descriptive in nature, and are meant to serve as introductions to current topics.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2012-honorees/jayson-lusk

Last Updated: 12 January 2022