Case Study Research Topics in Agribusiness Economics and Management

Within agricultural and applied economics, the development of and methodology for case-study research receives wide discussion. Despite this, there exists no published case-study research studies based in classic case-study methodology. Case-study research is an important methodological tool in social sciences, but generally not taught in agricultural and applied economics graduate programs. The objective is to discuss two different researchable topics requiring extensive data collection that are suitable for dissertations and research. The first topic is to help inform the theoretical contributions in geographic indications by collecting supply data for food products to better understand the relative shape of supply curves and their relative elasticities of supply for such products. The second topic is to understand the depth of agricultural global supply chains in a topical area such as sustainability. Both topics would provide cross-sectional and time-series dimensions in a detailed experimental design with individual firms being the subject of each data. There are opportunities for graduate degree programs to focus on case-study research, which would be suitable for dissertations. This is especially true for graduate students in agribusiness economics and management who have a desire to teach as a career.