Genetic Engineering and Society Zachary Brown

Associate Professor, Agriculture and Resource Economics

image of zachary brown

Contact Information

Nelson Hall 4310
Raleigh, NC

Zachary Brown joined NC State in January 2014 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Genetic Engineering and Society. Brown, an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, also teaches and advises students in the National Science Foundation-funded Ph.D. minor program on genetic engineering and society. Brown’s research focuses on the interactions between economic and biological systems, including the implications of biotechnology innovation in economic development.

From 2011 to 2013, Brown served as an economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. There he conducted policy analysis in the Environment Directorate, guiding a project examining the implications of behavioral economics for environmental policy, and overseeing the analysis of a household survey focused on the household consumption patterns and environmental attitudes. He received his Ph.D. from Duke University. Advised by Randall Kramer, Brown authored a dissertation examining the economics of malaria control programs in Africa. For this work, he was awarded the 2009 Peccei Prize from the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria and the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association’s 2012 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. Brown has published peer-reviewed articles in publications such as Environmental Science & Policy, the Journal of Economic Entomology, and Energy Economics. In 2011, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics awarded Brown and co-author Marc Bellemare its Outstanding Article award. Brown has also served as a postdoctoral research associate at the Duke Global Health Institute.