Jordan Van Rijn

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the department of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AAE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Associate Director of AAE’s professional master’s (MSPO) and visiting international student (VISP) programs. I am also a Research Fellow at the UW-Madison Center for Financial Security, a member of NCBA’s Council of Cooperative Economists and serve on the board of Working Capital for Community Needs, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit microfinance and social impact investment organization. I received my PhD in 2018 from the department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at UW-Madison and also hold degrees from UC-San Diego’s School of Global Policy & Strategy and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Prior to my current position, I worked as a Senior Economist at the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) for four years where I continue to work as a consultant. Before that I worked as a Senior Loan Officer for ACCION in New Mexico, a non-profit microfinance organization, and as a Project Associate for ideas42 in Colombia, where I utilized insights from behavioral economics to improve microcredit services and supply chain financing for dairy farmers.

My research fields include development economics, agricultural economics and financial economics, with applications to charitable giving, household finance and financial cooperatives. My research has been published in various academic journals including the Journal of Consumer Affairs, The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, the Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics and Agricultural and Environmental Letters.