"Do Food Labels Scare You? What Your Brain Shows," with John Crespi, Kansas State University, Friday, April 19, 3:40 PM-5 PM, 368A Heady Hall.

John Crespi’s research focuses on industrial organization and product differentiation issues in food and agriculture. His interests include product quality differences that affect commodity promotion, food safety regulations, food labeling, and the competitive structure of markets. He has worked as a consultant for several commodity boards performing studies to measure the effectiveness of industry-financed generic advertising. Crespi teaches courses in agribusiness marketing and research methods, as well as a team-taught course in quantitative methods.He received an M.A. in Economics, from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 1994, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural & Resource Economics, from the University of California, Davis, 2000.

Abstract: This seminar will present an overview of a neuroeconomic study funded by USDA examining human brain responses to controversial food technologies. To date, the research is the largest functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study on human response to food labels that signal the use of cloning, growth hormone, and "free range" production technologies. With several experiments underway, the seminar will be aimed at primarily at economists who wish to know more about the use of state-of-the-art neuroimaging methods in economics, how fMRI works, what fMRI can reveal and what it cannot, the types of analyses undertaken and emerging results, as well as pitfalls to this type of research. There is no paper, but the speaker will discuss methods and initial results of several ongoing experiments.

William G. Murray (1903-1991) was an agricultural economist, founder of Living History Farms, and an Iowa gubernatorial candidate. Murray received a BA from Coe College in 1924, and MA from Harvard University in 1925, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1932. He came to Iowa State University in 1927, with teaching and research interests in farm land valuation and finance. Murray served as head of the Department of Economics and Sociology at ISU from 1943 to 1955. In 1935-1936, he was chief economist with the Farm Credit Administration, and in 1948 he served as president of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association. He played a prominent role in the creation and early history of Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa, and in 1967, he helped organize the LHF Foundation. He served as research director of LHF from 1967-1974, and as its president from 1974-1981. Murray was also involved in Iowa politics, and was Iowa's Republican gubernatorial candidate in 1958 and 1966.