Luisa Menapace (left), a recent ISU Department of Economics PhD graduate, is this year’s winner of the prestigious Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA).

Menapace’s dissertation is entitled "Geographical Indications and Quality Promotion in Food and Agricultural Markets: Domestic and International Issues." While she says that she thought her dissertation was well-written, she was also “genuinely surprised” to receive the award.

The elements which helped her dissertation stand out, she says, was the choice of a topic with policy implications of broad interest, the development of a set of models that paid close attention to the work of real-world institutions, communicating in a way that reached a broad audience, and a balance between theory and applied economic analysis.

Menapace graduated from the department in the spring of 2010 with a PhD in economics. Her thesis advisor was Professor GianCarlo Moschini, Pioneer Chair in Science and Technology Policy and an AAEA Fellow. She is currently working in a postdoctoral position at the University of Trento in her native city of Trento, Italy.

Professor Moschini has first-hand knowledge of the value of this professional recognition, having himself received the AAEA Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award many years ago. “Luisa fully deserves this award,” he says. “She was creative and worked very hard in her dissertation. Her intellectual ambition and determination really paid off.”

The AAEA, formerly the American Agricultural Economics Association, is the main professional association serving the interests of members working in agricultural and broadly related fields of applied economics.