Jebaraj Asirvatham

Biography

Dr. Jebaraj Asirvatham (Jeb) is Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics in the Department of Agribusiness Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics in 2011 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining SIU, Dr. Jeb worked as an Instructor and as a post-doctoral research associate in the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. His primary research interests are Consumer Economics, Health Economics, and Nutrition and Health Behavior. Currently, he is researching causal effects of school food environment and peers on childhood obesity. He has received international award for one of his three dissertation essays from the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP) and Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE) in 2009. His MS thesis received the William Applebaum Memorial Scholarship awarded annually by the Food Distribution Research Society (FDRS) in recognition of his work on the Impacts of Vertical Coordination on Consumer and Producer Welfare

Research Interest

Influence of school food environment and social networks on health and nutritional outcomes.