Julie A. Caswell

Julie A. Caswell has made outstanding, continuing contributions to agricultural and applied economics in her over 25-year career at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research discoveries are building blocks of our knowledge of the economics of food quality, particularly in the areas of food labeling, food safety, the impacts of sanitary and phytosanitary regulations on international trade, and risk-based food safety regulation. Her work on food labeling illuminated the role of imperfect information in determining the performance of markets for food quality and the incentive effects of voluntary and mandatory labeling. Caswell has worked with government agencies, international bodies, and research consortia, and in serving on four National Academies committees, to enhance the use of risk-based principles in food quality regulation in domestic and international food markets.

Caswell has provided research leadership and mentored a generation of new researchers by educating graduate students and through her leadership in national research initiatives. She was one of the founding organizers of Regional Research Project NE-165: Private Strategies, Public Policies, and Food System Performance and served as its Chair from 1989 to 2002. Caswell is a past-president of the Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association and has served on the AAEA’s Foundation and Executive Boards.