Stephen Pitts SJ

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Welcome

Welcome to my website. I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. My advisor is Marc Bellemare.

Beginning in Fall 2025, I will be the Wade Jesuit Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of Marquette University.

One area of my research examines smallholder producers in Latin America and the agricultural cooperatives that improve their relationships to agricultural value chains.

I use a variety of techniques – a household survey, lab-in-the-field experiment, administrative data, and geospatial data – to answer questions about which producers join cooperatives, how cooperatives improve their livelihood, and what happens when cooperative relationships break down.

Another area of my research examines what happens when smallholder producers exit agriculture: the effect of government subsidies on internal migration and the role of worker referrals in the transition to the formal sector.

As a Jesuit priest-economist, I have recently been featured in Jesuit publications:

Also, a book review of mine of Research Ethics in Applied Economics was just published in Faith & Economics 83. You can read an ungated version.