About

Jeremy Foltz is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current research focuses on the economics of technology adoption and climate change resilience in the United States and Africa, as well as the broader economics of climate change. He also investigates political economy issues related to corruption and natural resource governance in Africa, the structural transformation of economies within the continent, and the economics of the research process at US universities. Professor Foltz's academic background includes a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earned in 1998, along with a Master's degree in the same field from the same university in 1994, and a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Political Science from Yale University in 1986. He is actively involved in teaching courses such as World Hunger and Malnutrition, the Growth and Development of Nations in the Global Economy, Agricultural and Economic Development in Africa, and Economics of Development.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Economics
• Development economics
• Microeconomics
• Business
• Ecology
• Environmental economics
• Geography
• Genetics
• Demography
• Demographic economics
• Biology
• Natural resource economics
• Marketing
• Economic geography

Selected publications

• Can the Service Sector Lead Structural Transformation in Africa? Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Can the Service Sector Lead Structural Transformation in Africa? Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Discrimination in science: Salaries of foreign and <scp>U.S.</scp> born land‐grant university scientists

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2025-06-17

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract The dominance of the US innovation and academic system relies heavily on foreign‐born labor for its success. Recent literature has shown evidence of wage gaps in academia based on gender and race; however, little is known about whether a wage gap might exist for foreign‐born faculty. This paper studies the compensation gap between US‐ and foreign‐born agricultural and life science faculty at 52 US land‐grant universities (LGU) using a survey of over 1400 scientists conducted in 2005 and 2015. We develop a framework to categorize the sources of a potential compensation gap into testable categories that capture direct discrimination as well as indirect ( systemic ) discrimination. We find wage differences in total annual compensation among the foreign‐born and the US‐born, tenure‐track faculty, however, the gap in the base annual salary is insignificant. This suggests that additional salary components like grants and summer teachings may not be equally available to foreign‐born faculty even though, on average, foreign‐born scientists work are more productive than US‐born scientists on most common output metrics. The decomposition analysis suggests that about one‐half of the gap (at 10% level) in the base salary and 60% of the differences in total salary (at 5% level)is due to various types of direct or systemic discrimination. Using our framework, we then rule in and rule out some important types of systemic discrimination.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• FDI in Côte d’Ivoire: Are local firms better off?

  Journal of Development Economics · 2025-01-01 · 7 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The effects of mining on local poverty in developing countries: Evidence from Mali

  World Development · 2024-04-18 · 5 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The impact of extreme precipitation on nutrient runoff

  Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association · 2023-11-27 · 20 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Agriculture remains a leading source of water pollution in the United States, and climate change may exacerbate this relationship. We quantify increases in nutrient runoff following extreme precipitation events, showing that spikes are higher in regions with crop and livestock production. The spike per head is smaller around large‐scale livestock production, relative to small‐scale, and cover crops mitigate runoff. Legacy nutrients enter the surface water following extreme precipitation, regardless of current activity. We shed light on practices to protect water quality with more frequent extreme precipitation events and demonstrate the importance of including these events in empirical models of water quality.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Effectiveness of local regulations on nonpoint source pollution: Evidence from <scp>Wisconsin</scp> dairy farms

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2023-02-08 · 13 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Although the Clean Water Act's regulation of point source pollution has had a significant effect on water quality, nonpoint sources of pollution, especially animal agriculture, remain a leading unevenly regulated source of water pollution in the United States. This work studies the effectiveness of local manure management regulations on dairy farms in Wisconsin. Wisconsin represents a unique policy experiment in the delegation of nonpoint agricultural pollution policy in a state with economically important small, nonpoint, dairy farms. Using hand collected regulatory data from Wisconsin counties we estimate the effects of changes in local regulations on water quality outcomes. The results demonstrate that a few easily implemented and verifiable regulations such as nutrient management plans have significant short‐term effects on water quality, whereas other less observable and difficult to implement regulations have no discernible effects in the short term. The work points to a number of potential policy levers to improve the Management of nonpoint pollution, as well as the challenges of nonpoint source regulatory policies on slow‐moving hydrologic processes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Competition and corruption: Highway corruption in West Africa

  Journal of Development Economics · 2023-03-09 · 9 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Impact of climate smart agriculture on food security: An agent-based analysis

  Food Policy · 2022 · 82 citations

  • Business
  • Natural resource economics
  • Environmental economics
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Peace and Petty Corruption: Evidence from Trucking in Côte d'Ivoire

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: NILE-NEXUS: Opportunities for a sustainable food-energy-water future in the Blue Nile Mountains of Ethiopia

  NSF · $167k · 2016–2022

• The Rate and Direction of Agricultural Research at US Land Grant Universities

  NSF · $151k · 2004–2007

Frequent coauthors

• Bradford L. Barham

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  68 shared

• Úrsula Aldana

  Institute of Peruvian Studies

  30 shared

• Paul Laris

  California State University, Long Beach

  21 shared

• Kwansoo Kim

  Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

  15 shared

• Jean‐Paul Chavas

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  14 shared

• Kwansoo Kim

  Seoul National University

  13 shared

• Pilar Useche

  13 shared

• Tirtha Dhar

  University of Guelph

  11 shared