Vincent H. Smith, Ph.D. 

Vincent H. Smith is professor of economics in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University and co-director of the MSU Initiative for Regulation and Applied Economic Analysis.  Smith received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in economics from the University of Manchester in 1970 and 1971, and his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 1987. He has been privileged to be a member of the Montana State University faculty since 1988.  Smith’s current research program examines agricultural trade and domestic policy issues, with a particular focus on agricultural domestic and trade policy, risk management, agricultural science policy, and domestic and world commodity markets.  He is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar who has authored and edited eleven  books and monographs, including The Economics of Crop Insurance and Disaster Aid, (co-authored with Dr. Barry Goodwin), and has also published over 200 articles on agricultural insurance and other policy and economic issues. 

Smith’s contributions to agricultural economics and the economics of agricultural insurance have been recognized nationally through multiple awards for outstanding research and education programs. In 2008, he became a Distinguished Scholar of the Western Agricultural Economics Association and in 2011 he received the USDA Bruce Gardner Award for his outstanding contributions to the economic analysis of agricultural policy.   Since 2010, Dr. Smith has also served as an American Enterprise Institute Visiting Scholar and the Director of AEI’s national agricultural policy research program.  The program is widely recognized as a vehicle through which leading internationally recognized scholars provide insights to congress and, more broadly, a wide range of stakeholders on the economic impacts of US agricultural policy. In addition, to his scholarly research, Dr. Smith work has been featured extensively in major print media (for example, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, US News and World Report, the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, the Congressional Quarterly, and other venues).