Dr. Jayson Lusk is the vice president and dean of OSU agricultural programs. He leads the Ferguson College of Agriculture and two state agencies: OSU Extension and OSU Ag Research. Dr. Lusk has published more than 280 scientific articles, six books, and travels extensively for speaking engagements and media appearances. Prior to returning to Oklahoma in August, Lusk served as head of the agricultural economics department at Purdue University.  He is a fellow and past president of the Agricultural and Applied Econonomics Association (AAEA) and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Research Interests:

Lusk is a food and agricultural economist who studies what we eat and why we eat it. Since 2001, he has published more than 270 articles in peer reviewed academic journals, six books, and seven book chapters. According to Google Scholar, his published works have been cited more than 26,600 times and he has an H-index of 85. His research has primarily centered on the following topics.

• Food Policy: Although food and agricultural policies are often motivated by noble intentions, economic analysis provides a framework for estimating consequences and understanding tradeoffs. Lusk has analyzed the consequences of various policies ranging from food labels, to bans on controversial agricultural technologies, to food assistance programs, to fat and soda taxes.
• Emerging Food Issues: Food preferences and technologies are constantly evolving, and as such, much of Lusk's research has focused on providing economic analysis and insight into consumer preferences for emerging food issues such as animal welfare, biotechnology, cloning, nanotechnology, growth promotants, local foods, etc.
• Consumer Behavior: Predicting consumers' responses to food marketing and policy initiatives requires an understanding of why people do what they do, which means studying preferences for risk, time, fairness, social status, etc. A key question driving much of Lusk's research is: why do consumers say they will do one thing in a survey but do something entirely different when shopping in the grocery store?
• Livestock and Meat Technology and Marketing: Animal agriculture represents the highest share of farm cash receipts, and as such, Lusk has researched livestock, poultry, and meat marketing and the impacts of technologies on these sectors.
• Research Methods: Lusk has created and improved experimental, survey, and statistical methods to better understand how consumers will react to food marketing and policy initiatives. He helped create new consumer research methods such as inferred valuation, incentive compatible conjoint, calibrated auction-conjoint, vignette conjoint, calibrated choice experiment, and basket-based choice experiment methods, and his work has led to further developments in best-worst scaling, choice experiments, and experimental auctions.