Rate My Professor Eric Belasco

Eric J. Belasco, Ph.D., serves as Professor and Department Head in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University, located in Bozeman, Montana. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from North Carolina State University (2007), where his dissertation focused on “Three Essays in Modeling Risk for Fed Cattle Production”; an M.S. in Economics from the same university (2005); and a B.S. in Economics from Saint Mary's College of California (2001). Belasco's career includes positions as Assistant Professor at Montana State University (2011–2015), Associate Professor there since 2015, Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University (2008–2011), and Research Associate at Duke University's Center for Clinical Health Policy Research (2007). He has also been a Research Fellow at the Center for Regulation and Applied Economic Analysis (2016–2018) and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute since 2015.

Belasco's research specializations encompass agricultural marketing, risk management, applied microeconometrics, and health economics, with particular emphasis on agricultural policy, marketing, and crop insurance. His key publications include Belasco, E.J., Schroeder, T.C., & Chen, Y. (2015). “The Impact of Extreme Weather on Cattle Feeding Profits.” Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 40(2), 285–305; Belasco, E.J. et al. (2013). “High Tunnels Are My Crop Insurance: An Assessment of Risk Management Tools for Small-Scale Specialty Crop Producers.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 42(2), 403–418; Gong, G., Belasco, E.J. et al. (2013). “Socioeconomic Deprivation as a Determinant of Cancer Mortality and the Hispanic Paradox in Texas, USA.” International Journal for Equity in Health, 12, 26; and Belasco, E.J., Schroeder, T.C., & Goodwin, B.K. (2010). “Quality Risk and Profitability in Cattle Production: A Multivariate Approach.” Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 35(3), 385–405. Among his honors are the Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year award from Texas Tech's Agricultural Economics Graduate Student Association (2009) and the Nancy Pollock Graduate School Dissertation Award from North Carolina State University (2008). Belasco has led or co-led funded projects totaling over $1 million, including multiple USDA Risk Management Agency grants for crop insurance education and organic farming risk assessment. He teaches courses such as AGBE 210 Economics of Agricultural Business, AGBE 421 Advanced Agricultural Marketing, and ECNS 562 Econometrics II. His professional service includes serving as Director of the Western Agricultural Economics Association (2015–2018), ad hoc reviewer for journals like the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and various departmental and faculty senate committees.