THE FRYAR CENTER

Lanier Nalley, Director

Lanier Nalley took over as head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness in October 2024. At the same time, he became director of the Fryar Price Risk Management Center of Excellence, succeeding John Anderson, who went on to become director of the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. A native of Georgia, Nalley received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural and development economics with minors in development studies and European history from The Ohio State University. He received his master’s degree in agricultural economics from Mississippi State University, focusing his research on experimental auctions. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from Kansas State University in 2007 in agricultural economics with an emphasis on international policy. While at Kansas State, Nalley conducted research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico City, focusing on the welfare analysis of international public wheat breeding. He also served as a volunteer in Ghana surveying women’s cooperatives regarding microfinance loans. Nalley has worked with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Accra, Ghana and International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, Philippines on international development related issues. Nalley has also earned a litany of honors for his work, including three John W. White Awards — a 2013 team award; 2021 Outstanding Teaching Award, 2023 Research Award plus earning the Jack G. Justus Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017.

Andrew M. McKenzie, Associate Director

Fryar Endowed Professor in Risk Management

Andrew McKenzie is a native of South Shields, Tyne and Wear, England. He specializes in price risk management, futures and options markets, grain marketing, and applied time series analysis. Andrew joined the faculty of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas in December 1998. His research interests include price risk management strategies, basis trading, grain marketing, price analysis in poultry and cattle markets, behavioral economics, and the informational role played by financial and commodity markets in transmitting price signals. He has published numerous journal articles about commodity futures markets and is a nationally recognized expert in grain basis trading. His research relating to financial and commodity futures market information and efficiency has been published in some of the most prestigious economics journals, including Journal of Applied Econometrics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and Journal of Futures Markets.

Eunchun Park, Assistant Professor

Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Risk Analysis and Management

Park completed his Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University in 2017 in agricultural economics. His research interests are mainly on applied econometrics and agricultural risk analysis, including crop insurance and commodity futures and options market. Much of his current work focuses on crop insurance rating and spatial smoothing using Bayesian inference. He is currently extending his work on the Bayesian modeling to density smoothing based on climate and soil type similarity

Andrew Anderson, Assistant Professor

Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness

Anderson completed his Ph.D. in agricultural economics at Kansas State University in 2023. Anderson’s research interests focus on applied price analysis, production economics and consumer demand.