Kristin Kiesel - Assistant Professor

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Kiesel began teaching at CSU, Sacramento in Fall 2009.

 

 

 

 

Kristin Kiesel is one of two new faculty members in the Economics Department.  Originally from Germany, Kristin was raised in Berlin-Lichtenberg.  After experiencing the fall of the Berlin Wall, her family moved to Munich. Years later Kristin returned to Berlin, which will always remain her favorite city, to study Communication Sciences at the Technische Universität.  During that time, she also spent a year as an exchange student at Montana State University, in Bozeman, where she later returned to complete her Master’s Degree in Applied Economics. From there Kristin moved to Berkeley and received her PhD. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. During a one year joint postdoctoral appointment with UC Berkeley and Stanford University, she developed the SIEPR-GIANNINI Data center for which she continues to serve as a director.

Kristin’s areas of specialization are in applied microeconomics and econometrics, analyzing how changes in information affect consumer choice.  Her research has focused on food policy and food demand analysis, investigating consumer response to a variety of food labeling regulations. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and the Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization and is currently under review at The Review of Economics and Statistics.

In one of her previous studies, Kristin investigated the effects of media coverage on organic production and the National Organic Program on consumer purchases. Kristin is currently starting a new project that looks at the effect of media coverage, linking soft drink consumption and obesity, on demand and substitution patterns for soft drinks and alternative beverages.  Possible offsetting advertising effects as well as policy interventions, such as existing and proposed tax policies and soft drink bans at school, will be important considerations in this project for which she hopes to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health.

The effect of food and taste education on eating habits is the focus of another ongoing project in cooperation with Slow Food, currently carried out in schools in Belarus. Kristin visited multiple Belarusian schools during the pilot phase of this project – brushing the dust off her long-unused Russian language skills to interact with students.

Kristin also very much enjoys spending time with her seven-year-old daughter, Tia. This summer, they went on an unforgettable trip to Africa together. They also visit Germany frequently to spend time with their family. When Kristin gets homesick, she cooks traditional German meals to the delight of her friends. And if she has enough energy left, she loves to steal away for a long run in the Berkeley Hills.

Kristin very much enjoys teaching and would like to encourage students to come to her office hours to talk about the material covered in class, her research, economics, and life.