College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics

Publications on Google Scholar

Maria Porter joined the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics in 2013 as an Assistant Professor (Fixed-Term). She is currently involved in research projects in Burkina Faso, China, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom, as well as in Michigan. Her research involves work in labor economics, impact evaluation, intra-household labor allocation decisions, factors influencing households’ adoption of new crops and agricultural technologies, understanding adult children’s motivations for giving transfers and support to parents, and household bargaining between spouses. She employs a variety of research methods, including randomized control trials, laboratory experiments, and survey data analysis. Maria currently advises several AFRE Ph.D. students in international development.

Maria holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. Before coming to MSU, she was a research fellow at the University of Oxford. She has taught graduate courses in household and development economics, and undergraduate courses in intermediate microeconomics and development economics. She is currently working on Impact Evaluation of the “Scaling Up Sweet Potato Through Agriculture and Nutrition Project.

Research and Outreach Interests:

• Household and Family Economics
• Labor Economics
• Impact Evaluation
• Agricultural Technology Adoption

https://sites.google.com/site/mariaporter/

Teaching Experience

• ABM 303: Economics of Decision Making: Managerial Economics for the Agri-Food System (Fall 2017)

• AFRE 961: Advanced Topics: Agricultural Development Economics (Spring 2017)

• AFRE 835: Introductory Econometrics (Spring 2018)