AAEA Trust Profile: Hope Michelson

AAEA Trust Profile is a new bi-monthly series following up with AAEA Trust sponsored scholarship, fellowship and grant winners. This issue features Hope Michelson, an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Hope received the Chester O. McCorkle, Jr. Scholarship in 2007 while attending Cornell University. The McCorkle Scholarship supports applied research by a graduate student on economic issues relating to agriculture. Hope’s research proposal, which won her the scholarship, collected and analyzed a unique household-level data set essential to study the welfare effects over time of a local and international marketing revolution on Nicaraguan small farmer operations.

How did winning the scholarship help accomplish your research goals?

The Chester O. McCorkle Scholarship, along with a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship and a USAID Basis AMA CRSP, funded my dissertation research in Nicaragua. The study, part of a broader research project undertaken in collaboration with researchers at Michigan State University and the Universidad Centroamericana, analyzed the dynamics of small farmers’ participation in Nicaraguan supermarket supply chains. I also estimated the effects of participation on small farmers’ wealth – measured by changes in their productive asset portfolios relative to comparison non-participant farmers. Read More>>

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