Zachary Brown

About

Zachary Brown, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NC State University. He is also a faculty member of the Genetic Engineering & Society Center and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Environmental and Resource Policy. Dr. Brown earned his Ph.D. in Environmental and Resource Economics from Duke University in 2011 and his B.A. in Mathematics-Economics from Lawrence University in 2005. His research and teaching broadly focus on bioeconomics, analyzing the dynamic interactions between human behavior and complex environmental and ecological systems through experimental methods, observational data, mathematical models, and theory. His work includes researching the effects of economic incentives and policies for managing pesticide resistance in agricultural systems, public perceptions and consumer willingness to pay for food products utilizing new genetic engineering technologies, the economics of controlling vector-borne diseases such as malaria, and economic evaluations of household cookstoves aimed at reducing air pollution and deforestation.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Agronomy
• Biology
• Waste management
• Mathematics
• Microeconomics
• Chemistry
• Horticulture
• Economics

Selected publications

• Governing evolution: A socioecological comparison of resistance management for insecticidal transgenic Bt crops among four countries

  AMBIO · 2019-03-21 · 98 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Cooperative management of pest susceptibility to transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crops is pursued worldwide in a variety of forms and to varying degrees of success depending on context. We examine this context using a comparative socioecological analysis of resistance management in Australia, Brazil, India, and the United States. We find that a shared understanding of resistance risks among government regulators, growers, and other actors is critical for effective governance. Furthermore,…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Crop rotation mitigates impacts of corn rootworm resistance to transgenic Bt corn

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 59 citations

  resistance to Bt corn.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Does the U.S. public support using gene drives in agriculture? And what do they want to know?

  Science Advances · 2019-09-06 · 50 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  = 1018) of U.S. adult attitudes toward agricultural gene drives. When informed about potential risks, benefits, and two previously researched applications, respondents' support/opposition depends heavily (+22%/-19%) on whether spread of drives can be limited, non-native versus native species are targeted (+12%/-9%), or the drive replaces versus suppresses target species (±2%). The one-fifth of respondents seeking out non-GMO-labeled food are more likely to oppose drives, although their support e…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Distributional policy impacts, WTP-WTA disparities, and the Kaldor-Hicks tests in benefit-cost analysis

  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · 2022 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A glimpse into real-world kitchens: Improving our understanding of cookstove usage through in-field photo-observations and improved cooking event detection (CookED) analytics

  Development Engineering · 2021 · 10 citations

  The combustion of solid fuels in residential cookstoves is a global health and climate issue, and expanded use of improved cookstoves could have significant benefits locally and globally. Evaluating impacts of improved cookstove programs requires more accurately measuring stove use patterns. This work builds on and improves existing stove use monitoring methods. First, we introduce and describe a novel, in-field photo-observation sampling method designed to capture near-continuous, real-world, g…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: PRICES, PEERS, AND PERCEPTIONS: FIELD EXPERIMENTS ON TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION IN THE CONTEXT OF IMPROVED COOKSTOVES

  NSF · $99k · 2015–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Kostas Orginos

  William & Mary

  24 shared

• Stefan Meinel

  University of Arizona

  17 shared

• Katherine L. Dickinson

  14 shared

• Randall A. Kramer

  Duke University

  11 shared

• Marc F. Bellemare

  9 shared

• Michael S. Jones

  University of Alaska Anchorage

  8 shared

• William Detmold

  8 shared

• Roderick M. Rejesus

  North Carolina State University

  7 shared

Similar researchers at North Carolina State University

• Kathryn Boysh-21
• Nicholas Brownh-5