Workshop on Survey Design & Experimental Methods in Applied and Agricultural Economics

Host organization: Arizona State University May 22-26, 2023 (for details see schedule) Morrison School of Agribusiness, Arizona State University Agribusiness Center (Behavioral Economics & Policy Research Laboratory) Polytechnic Campus, Mesa, AZ 85212, USA

Target Audience

The workshop is open to academics, graduate students at different levels (MSc, MPhil, PG-diploma, and PhD), professionals, consultants, and other practitioners. Seats are limited. Therefore, applications will be considered on a first-come first-serve basis.

Workshop Description

Some of the great challenges of Western societies revolve around sustainable consumption and healthy food choices. For example, malnutrition and obesity resulting from poor nutritional behavior contributes to high healthcare costs as well as increasing external costs throughout the economy. This leads to an increasing need for primary data in food, health, and environmental economics research. Recently, an uptick in such studies has been observed, driven by the need for such estimates to inform cost-benefit analysis, the need to understand problems with increased external validity, to account for hypothetical bias in making informed inference, etc. As these approaches have grown increasingly popular, the focus on experimental economics is timely.

The main objective of the workshop is to deliver theoretical and practical knowledge so as to enable participants to design surveys and employ experimental methods. More specifically, this workshop serves as an introduction to state-of-the-art methods to address research questions related to preferences, willingness to pay, and choice. In addition, delegates will be familiarized with state-of-the-art software, and design their own practice experiment through hands-on training. As such, the workshop is an opportunity for young scholars who want to learn these methods to incorporate them in their thesis, for experienced academics who want to include this in their research agenda, as well as, for practitioners to enhance their own business-practice.

The workshop will take place at Arizona State University. Led by experts from Arizona State University, Cornell University, Michigan State University, Purdue University, Susquehanna University and Texas A&M University, the workshop will consist of a variety of lectures, software introduction, and hands-on training. Fusing knowledge from agribusiness, agricultural economics, consumer studies, marketing and applied economics the workshop will cover the basics required for successfully using surveys and experiments in research studies. This includes designing stand-alone or accompanying surveys, choice experiments, and auctions to collect data; as well as, related data analyses, interpretation of results, and deriving recommendations to stakeholders. After completing this workshop, the participant will be able to design a survey instruments, stated choice experiments, and auctions. In addition, the participants will be able to analyze survey data using multi-variate methods, stated choice data by estimating discrete choice models, and auction data using Tobit models. Furthermore, the program includes how to assess published evidence, interpret results and derive recommendations for stakeholders.