WASHINGTON— The US Department of Agriculture has named Spiro E. Stefanou as administrator of the Economic Research Service. The ERS is the division of the USDA that anticipates trends and emerging issues in agriculture, food, the environment and rural America. The agency conducts objective economic research to inform and enhance public and private decision making.

Stefanou is an expert in the agricultural economics areas of production analysis; innovation, growth, and performance; agricultural and food industries and the dynamics of economic adjustment.

He was a professor of economics at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agriculture for more than five years. Prior to working at the University of Florida, he was professor of agricultural economics at Penn State University for more than 30 years.

He is a distinguished fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and was a Marie Curie Senior Fellow at the University of Crete (Rethymnon, Greece), Mansholt Senior Fellow at Wageningen University (Netherlands), and Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy).

He has been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Vienna, Austria), and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute (at Chania).

Stefanou also has been a member of the editorial boards of six national and international journals and is managing editor of Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy in addition to being past editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

He received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from George Washington University, a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Maryland and a doctorate in agricultural economics from the University of California, Davis.

“We look forward to adding Dr. Stefanou’s more than 30 years of leadership and expertise in agricultural economics as we usher in a new era for ERS,” said Scott Hutchins, deputy undersecretary of Research, Education, Economics. “Under his leadership, ERS will thrive as a world-class economic powerhouse and will continue to build and deliver scientifically-sound economic data and research to help shape US agricultural policy and to better serve our customers and stakeholders across the nation.”