aker
Alan P. Ker
After obtaining his joint PhD in Economics and Statistics at North Carolina State University (09-92 to 03-96), Alan worked as a professor (and subsequently Head from 2002-07 in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Arizona. In April 2009, Alan and his kids moved to Canada where he joined the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics in his new position as Chair and Professor. In September 2014, Alan concluded his 5-year term and became Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Food and Agricultural Policy. The Institute attracts and supports students in the area of food and agricultural economics, hosts conferences, publishes FAREShare (newsletter) and supports FARETalk (podcast). Alan served as 2016-17 President of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society and sits on the editorial boards of the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics and the European Review of Agricultural Economics. In 2019, he became the OAC Research Chair in Agricultural Risk and Policy. Also in 2019, he became Managing Editor of the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. In 2021, Alan was named Fellow of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society. Alan has testified multiple times before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. Alan spent 2016 fall term visiting Sapienza University (Rome) and 2017 winter term visiting University of Queensland (Brisbane). Alan has organized both national and provincial conferences on issues of current policy relevance to the Canadian agricultural and food sectors. His interests are varied having published in leading academic journals ranging from agricultural economics, economics, statistics, probability, law, animal science, and plant science. Current research involves the link between climate change, innovation, and yield volatilities, issues related to risk management and crop insurance, the eco-mafia, and developing methodologies that borrow information from like dgps to increase small sample efficiency of nonparametric estimators. Alan and his students have been consistently recognized with national awards of excellence for their research. Alan has placed multiple Ph.D. students in teaching-research tenure-track positions at leading Research I Universities in the United States. Alan has also written for the popular press publishing on issues related to agri-food policy in the "National Post", "The Hill Times", and "Conversation Canada" as well as others.
Current Grants (sole PI only list):
"Economic Modelling for Policy Analysis", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2022 ($300,000)
"BRM Payments and Climate Change", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2021 ($35,000)
"Agricultural Risk and Policy in Canada", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2021 ($100,000)
"ASF in Canada", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2021 ($50,000)
"Agricultural Risk and Policy in Canada", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2020 ($100,000)
"Climate Change and Agricultural Insurance Premiums in Canada", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2020 ($10,000)
"Commodity Specific Economic Modelling", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2019-2021 ($300,000)
"Climate Change, Comparative Advantage, and Agricultural Policy", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2018-2020 ($96,000)
"Modelling Trade Scenarios for Dairy and Poultry", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2017-2018 ($85,000)
"Climate Change, Technology, and Yield Volatilities: Measurement and Economic Implications for Ontario.", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2017-2019 ($167,000)
"Thresholds, Climate Change, and Ontario Crop Yields ." PI: Alan P. Ker; 2016-2018 ($120,000)
"Competitiveness of Ontario’s Agri-Food Sector under Import Pressures.", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2016-2018 ($177,000 )
"Developing An Economic Model of Ontario’s Pork Sector with Application to Disease Outbreak and Policy Response Analysis", PI: Alan P. Ker; 2016-2018 ($60,000 )
"Modelling Ontario's Chicken industry for Policy Analysis." PI: Alan P. Ker; 2016-2018 ($120,000 )
Academic History
Ph.D. Economics and Statistics (co-major), North Carolina State University, Sept. 1992- March 1996.
M.Sc. Agricultural Economics, University of Guelph, Sept. 1989- Aug. 1991.
B.A. Honours Economics, University of Waterloo, Sept. 1985- Aug. 1989.
Awards and Honours
- Fellow - Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, 2021;
- Managing Editor - Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics;
- Editorial Board - European Journal of Agricultural Economics
- Honourable Mention, 2018 Best Journal Article - Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2018.
- co-supervised Rebecca Elskamp - winner of 2017 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award (awarded every three years)
- supervised Regan Arntz-Gray - co-winner of 2017 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society Outstanding M.Sc. Thesis Award
- President, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society 2016-17
- supervised Tor Tolhurst - winner of 2015 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society Outstanding M.Sc. Thesis Award
Managing Editor, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics; OAC Research Chair in Agricultural Risk and Policy; Director and Professor, Institute for the Advanced Study of Food and Agricultural Policy
Research Impact
- innovation, climate change, and crop yield volatility
- risk management / insurance
- small sample nonparametric econometrics
- economics impacts of disease outbreaks in agriculture
- modelling commodity price volatilities
- enviromental crimes and the eco-mafia
- thoery and impacts of trade agreements
Featured Publications
* denotes students
2022
Biden, Scott*, Alan P. Ker and Stephen Duff, "Impacts of an African Swine Fever Outbreak on Ontario's Pork Industry" Canadian Public Policy. UTP.
Chemeris, Anna*, Yong Liu*, and Alan P. Ker , "Insurance Subsidies, Climate Change, and Innovation: Implications for Crop Yield Resiliency" Food Policy, Elseveir
2021
Ker, Alan P. and Ryan Cardwell, "COVID-19 and the Canadian Agricultural and Food Sectors: Thoughts from One Year into the Pandemic" Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. (Invited). Wiley.
Ker, Alan P. and Scott Biden* "Risk Managment in Canada's Agricultural Sector in Light of COVID-19: Considerations One Year Later" Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. (Invited). Wiley.
2020
Liu, Yong*, and Alan P. Ker "Simultaneous Borrowing of Information Across Space and Time for Pricing Insurance Contracts: An Application to Rating Crop Insurance" Journal of Risk and Insurance. Wiley
Shang, Zongyuan*, and Alan P. Ker "Two Generalized Nonparametric Methods for Estimating Like Densities" Computational Statistics. Springer
Biden, Scott*, Alan P. Ker and Stephen Duff "Impacts of Trade Liberalization in Canada's Supply managed Dairy Industry." Agricultural Economics. Wiley
Naylor, Jamie*, Brady Deaton and Alan P. Ker "Assessing the Effect of Food Retail Subsidies on the Price of Food in Remote Indigenous Communities in Canada ." Food Policy. Elseveir
Ker, Alan P. and Ryan Cardwell, "COVID-19 and the Canadian Agricultural and Food Sectors: Thoughts from the Pandemic Onset" Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. (Invited). Wiley.
Ker, Alan P. "Risk Managment in Canada's Agricultural Sector in Light of COVID-19" Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. (Invited). Wiley.
2019
Ker, Alan P. and Tol N. Tolhurst* "On the Treatment of Heteroscedasticity in Crop Yield Data." American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Blackwell
Germani, Anna Rita, Alan P. Ker, and Angelo Castaldo "On the Existence and Shape of an Environmental Crime Kuznets Curve: A Case Study of Italian Provinces" Ecological Indicators. Elseveir
Liu, Yong*, and Alan P. Ker "Rating Crop Insurance Contracts with Nonparametric Bayesian Model Averaging." Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
Ng, Horlick*, and Alan P. Ker "On the Changing Nature of Canadian Crop Yield Distributions." Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
Liu, Yong*, and Alan P. Ker "When Less is More: On the Use of Historical Yield Data with Application to Rating Area Crop Insurance Contracts." Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
2018
Ker, Alan P. and Abdoul Sam "Semiparametric Estimation of the Link Function in Binary-Choice Single-Index Models." Computational Statistics. Springer
2017
Ker, Alan P., Barry Barnett, David Jacques*, and Tor Tolhurst* "Canadian Business Risk Management: Private Firms, Crown Corporations, and Public Institutions." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. Wiley
Li, Na*, Alan P. Ker, Abdoul Sam, and Satheesh Aradhyula “Modelling regime-dependent agricultural commodity price volatilities”, Agricultural Economics . Wiley
Ker, Alan P. “Evaluating Agricultural Economists within Colleges and Faculties of Agriculture.” Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (presidential address). Wiley
Ker, Alan P. and Yong Liu* “Bayesian Model Averaging of Possibly Similar Nonparametric Densities”, Computational Statistics . Springer
Cairns, Alex*, Tor Tolhurst*, Poon Ken*, Alan P. Ker, David Jacques*, Stephen Duff "The Economic Impact of a Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreak for Ontario's Beef Sector." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, . Wiley
2016
Ker, Alan P. "Nonparametric Estimation of Possibly Similar Densities." Statistics and Probability Letters. Elseveir
Ker, Alan P., Tor Tolhurst* and Yong Liu* "Bayesian Estimation of Possibly Similar Yield Densities: Implications for Rating Crop Insurance Contracts." American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Blackwell.
2015
Diiro, G*, Alan P. Ker, Abdoul Sam "The Role of Gender in Fertilizer Adoption in Uganda." African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, .
Gaudin, A*, Tolhurst, T*, Alan P. Ker, Janovicek, K. & Deen B. “Increasing Crop Diversity Improves Yield Stability and Resilience to Weather Variations.” PLOS One, .
Tolhurst, Tor* and Alan P. Ker “On Technological Change in Yields." American Journal of Agricultural Economics, . Blackwell
Recent Academic Presentations
"Testing for Structural Change in Higher Moments with Unknown Break-Point", University of Arizona, December, 2021.
"Insurance Subsidies, Climate Change, Technical Change, and Yield Resiliency in US Agriculture", Atlantic Canada Economics Association, University of Moncton, October, 2019.
"Sup-Type Test of Distributional Equivalence when Break is Unknown", Atiner Institute, Athens, July, 2019.
"Insurance Subsidies and Technical Change in US Agriculture", Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Arizona, April, 2019.
"Is There Too Much History in Historical Crop Yields?", Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University, March, 2019.
"Subsidized Crop Insurance and Technological Change in Crop Yields", Faculty of Land and Food Systems, University of British Columbia, October 2018.
"Nonparametric Estimation of Like DGPs", Economics Dept., Dalhousie University , September 2018.
"Mixture Models and Economic Heterogeneity", International Agricultural Economics Association, Conference; Vancouver, August 2018.
"Climate and Innovation Induced Yield Volatilities", International Biometrics Conference; Barcelona, Spain, July 2018.
"Is there too much history in historical yield data", Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics; University of Georgia, Athens, June 2018.
"Climate Change and Agricultural Productivity", Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, May 2018.
"Nonparametric Econometrics using R", Minzu University, Beijing, May 2018.
"Is there too much history in historical yield data", Minzu University, Beijing, May 2018.
"Nonparametric Econometrics", Minzu University, Beijing, May 2018.
"Mixture Model Estimation with Applications", Minzu University, Beijing, May 2018.
"Climate Change and Agricultural Productivity",Minzu University, Beijing, May 2018.
"Is There Too Much History in Historical Yield Data", Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech University - Blacksburg, Virginia, March 2018.
"Is There Too Much History in Historical Yield Data", Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California - Davis, Davis, December 2017.
"Is There Too Much History in Historical Yield Data", Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, December 2017.
"Is There Too Much History in Historical Yield Data", Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Arizona, Tucson, November 2017.
"Is There Too Much History in Historical Yield Data", Morrison School of Agribusiness, Arizona State University, Phoenix, November 2017.
"On the Use of Historical County Yield Data", Department of Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, November 2017.
"Borrowing Information Across Space and Time from Like DGPs with Application to Rating Insurance Contracts", Insurance Mathematics and Economics, Vienna, Austria, July 2017.
"Climate, Innovation, Yield Volatilities and BRM Programs", Canadian Agricultural Economics Society Annual Meeting, Montreal, June 2017.
"Borrowing information across time from like DGPs", Economics Department, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. April 2017.
"Changing Climate, Technology, and Yield Volatilities", Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. March 2017.
"Climate and Innovation Induced Yield Volatility", Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations, Rome, Italy. November 2016.
"Canadian Agricultural Public Policy: Trade, Climate Change, and Risk", Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. November 2016.
"Using Extraneous Data to Rate Crop Insurance Contracts: Issues of Correlation and Consistency", AAEA, Boston. July 2016.
"Evaluating Agricultural Economists in Colleges and Schools of Agriculture", Presidential Address, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, Victoria, B.C. June 2016.
"Nonparametric Econometrics with R", Learning Workshop, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, Victoria, B.C. June 2016.
Recent Outreach Presentations
"Canadian BRM Programs and COVID-19; One Year Later", University of Manitoba, Agricultural and Food Conversations , April, 2021.
"Canadian BRM Programs, Private Insurance, and Contrasts with U.S. System", 2021 Annual General Meeting of Canadian Farmers Association, February, 2021.
"Canadian BRM: A Study of Syntax and Mythical Changes", Presentation to the House of Commons, June, 2020.
"BRM Under Review: A Study of Syntax and Mythical Changes", 2020 CAES Policy Conference, Ottawa, January 2020.
"New Directions at the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics", 2020 CAES Policy Conference, Ottawa, January 2020.
"Insurance Subsidies, Climate Change, and Innovation: Implications for Crop Yield Resiliency", 2019 Plant Science Symposium, University of Guelph, November 2019.
"Current Trade Issues for Canadian Agriculture", Keynote Address, 2019 Ontario Canola Growers Association Annual Meeting, January 2019.
"Modelling the Canadian Dairy Industry", Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, June 2018.
"Current Trade Issues for Canadian Agriculture", FarmSmart 2018 Conference, Guelph, January 2018.
"US Crop Insurance Program", OMAFRA, December 2017.
"BRM Policy Options and Efficacy", Risk Management Workshop, Winnipeg, November 2017.
"Canadian Dairy and Trade", Canadian Dairy Commission, Ottawa, October 2017.
"Market Models for Policy Analysis", OMAFRA, Guelph, September 2017
"Climate and Innovation Induced Yield Volatilities", Institute for the Advanced Study of Food and Agricultural Policy 2017 Conference, Guelph. May 2017.
"Debt in the Agricultural Sector and Its Effects", Testimony to House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, Ottawa. May 2017.
"The Fingerprint of Climate and Innovation on Yields", Agricultural and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, January 2017.
"Current Issues in Production Agriculture", TD Bank, Guelph, Ontario, April 2016.
"Climate and innovation induced crop yield volatilities with (weak) policy implications", OMAFRA Research Rendezvous, Guelph, Ontario, April 2016.
Recent Conferences Organized:
"Current Issues in Canadian Agri-Food Policy", 8th Annual CAES Policy Conference, Ottawa, January, 2018.
"Big Data, Changing Climate, and Agriculture", Guelph, May, 2017.
"Is Production Agriculture Headed for Another Farm Financial Crisis", Guelph, May, 2015.
Recent Other Outreach:
Canadian BRM: A Study in Syntax and Mythical Changes; Written brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture, May 2020.
COVID-19 and Risk Management in Canada's Agricultural Sector; FAREShare, May 2020.
COVID-19 Impact on Agricultural and Food Sectors; FAREShare, May 2020.
COVID-19 and Canadian Agricultural and Food Sectors; FARETalk Podcast, April 2020.
U of G Experts Contribute to COVID-19-Focused Agriculture Journal; University of Guelph News, April 2020.
Member of Team Ontario BRM Review; 2017-2019.
"Managing producers' risk key focus for new OAC research chair", RealAgriculture.com, December, 2018.
"Slumping milk prices force dairy farmers to think outside the barn", Christian Science Monitor, June, 2018.
"In Conversation: Bringing to Light Economic Outcomes of Food Policy", Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph, March 2018.
"Post Conference Report: Current Issues in Canadian Agri-Food Policy", March, 2018.
"Experts Weigh in on a Food Policy for Canada", FAREShare, January, 2018.
"Risk Warning: Inside the campaign to get better risk management programs for Canada's farmers", Country Guide, January, 2018.
"NAFTA renegotiations: Seeing the benefits through the bluster", National Post, Conversation Canada, Hamilton Spectator, Kitchner Post, September 2017
"Terminating NAFTA Highly Unlikely", University of Guelph homepage, September 2017
"Managing Risk and Efficacy of Government Programs", FAREShare, July, 2017
"Volatile times - how innovation and climate change impact risk management programs", RealAgriculture.com (podcast), June, 2017
"Will Publicly Subsidized Crop Insurance Prevent On-Farm Climate Change Mitigation", FAREShare, May, 2017
"Ag policy seen as bigger risk than farm debt", Western Producer, May 18, 2017
"Commentary versus Content: We Need Your Feedback", FAREShare, March, 2017
"Trump's presidency puts Canada's food producers on alert", The Hill Times, February 14, 2017
"NAFTA, Trump, and Trade", FAREShare, January, 2017