My father, Jim Irwin, cultivating corn on our Iowa farm in the mid-1940s.
The RFS
After 15 years of work with some extraordinary collaborators, I’m thrilled to share that “The Biofuels Blueprint: Understanding the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard” has been published as a Featured Article in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy — and it’s open access. This is the comprehensive review of the RFS I…
Cows and Courses
When Doug Peterson and I wrote Back to the Futures, we aimed at a general audience — farmers, grain traders, market analysts, and curious readers. We didn’t really think of it as a classroom book. Of course, I wanted the book to help educate readers about commodity markets, but most…
Master Teacher
One of the best parts of writing my book Back to the Futures has been discovering the unexpected ways it has been used in and out of the classroom. With that in mind, meet Dr. Maria Boerngen, Professor of Agribusiness at Illinois State University — and one of my department’s…
Does Complexity Pay in Forecasting?
Research on forecasting across a multitude of economic time series demonstrates an interesting principle: simple, robust statistical models tend to dominate in terms of forecast accuracy. The core finding traces back to early work by Dawes (1979) and Makridakis and Hibon (1979), who showed that simple linear models and naive…
Daredevils and Speculators
“Then we heard the high-pitched whir of a snowmobile engine far in the distance. It was like a scene from a World War II movie, where the Americans hear the ominous sound of an approaching Japanese bomber before they see it. The sound kept getting louder and louder, and we…
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