Research Groups
Our eleven research groups cover key dimensions of the agri-food system from production to consumption as well as a broad spectrum of quantitative and qualitative reserach methods, such as econometrics, modelling, and content analysis.
Agricultural and Food Market Research

Prof. Dr. Monika Hartmann
Analysis of the behavior of consumers and other stakeholders in the agri-food value chains, to gain knowledge about how the transformation process necessary to achieve the sustainability goals can be promoted.
Circular Digital
Economy

Prof. Dr. Daniel Hermann
We investigate questions on digitalization and sustainability, as well as the intersection of these two, applying quantitative approaches.
Data Science in Agricultural Economics

Dr. Hugo Storm
The research of the group focuses on developing and applying novel data science tools in the area of agricultural and environmental economics.
Economic and
Agricultural Policy

Prof. Dr. Thomas Heckelei
The chair for economic and agricultural policy focuses its research on analysing agricultural and food policies. While continuing research on more traditional agricultural policy issues, newer projects cover environmental impacts of agriculture, rural development issues and trade in agricultural and food commodities.
Economic Modeling of Agricultural Systems
PD Dr. Wolfgang Britz
Our research focus is on the quantitative analysis of questions related to sustainability of and provision of eco-systems services by agri-food systems from farm to global scale.
Economics of Sustainable Land Use and Bioeconomy

Prof. Dr. Jan Börner
Assessment and evaluation of impacts of environmental policy instruments, natural resource governance, and bioeconomic transformation on land use, ecosystem services, and rural development.
Innovation and Management in Agribusiness

Dr. Christian Baccarella (interim)
The research activities of the Chair of Innovation and Management in Agribusiness center around different topics in innovation management. Our main aim is to understand and improve innovation endeavors of various actors in the context of agribusiness. Focal topics range from the creation of new business models to analyzing innovation ecosystems.
Production
Economics
PD Dr. Alisher Mirzabaev (interim)
The production economics group mainly works quantitatively on farm- and firm-level decisions, in particular on dis-investment decisions to analyse structural change in agriculture using microeconometric methods.
Socioeconomics of Sustainable
Nutrition

Prof. Dr. Dominic Lemken
The research group Socioeconomics of Sustainable Nutrition analyses sustainable consumer behaviour focusing on food choice environments and nutrition policy.
External research groups
Global change and systemic risks

Prof. Dr. Jakob Rhyner
“Global change” embraces a range of change processes such as changes in climate, natural resources, the global economy , technology, as well as changes in societal structures and values. We go beyond sectoral perspectives of risk management and embrace systemic approaches in order to investigate global change and its trade-offs.
Economic and Technological Change

Prof. Dr. Matin Qaim
Our focus: sustainable economic growth, and the reduction of inequality and extreme poverty. Our methods: the application of economics in an interdiscipinary context, based on modeling sectors and economies, households and communities, and on analysing systems and collective action, or investigating data econometrically.