OnPoint Analytics is pleased to introduce the latest additions to our team of experts: Drs. Jeffrey Dorfman and Leora Lawton.
Dr. Dorfman received both his bachelor’s degree and his doctorate in agricultural economics from the University of California, Davis. He is a professor at The University of Georgia, where he has been on the faculty since 1989. In addition to food production and agricultural resources, Dr. Dorfman specializes in valuing real property assets, advising on development projects, crop and flood damage, and various topics in pharmaco-economics. Dr. Dorfman teaches classes in microeconomic theory, the economics of the food industry, and macroeconomic theory and policy. He performs research on food insecurity, productivity measurement, economic forecasting, a variety of agribusiness topics, development economics, and the economics of growth and sprawl. He has authored three books, most recently Economics and Management of the Food Industry, one hundred academic journal articles, and a variety of other articles published in trade publications, the popular press, and on the web. Dr. Dorfman writes regular opinion columns for Forbes and RealClearMarkets.com with additional pieces in other outlets. His consulting projects have included estimation of economic damages, analysis of market conditions for agricultural inputs and outputs, contract disputes, business valuation, the economic impacts of land use decisions and development projects on both communities and local government budgets, real estate valuation, and projection of market viability for newly developed products.
Dr. Lawton is a demographer and an expert in survey design and statistical interpretation. She received her bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and her doctorate in sociology from Brown University. She is on the faculty in the Department of Demography at UC Berkeley and serves as the Executive Director of the Berkeley Population Center. She specializes in questionnaire design for creative and complex research projects and performs statistical analysis to glean the most insight possible from quantitative data. She has extensive experience in online survey research projects and performed product development for an online survey software technology. She also enjoys qualitative work and advises on how to integrate qualitative insights into quantitative results. Her research services include sampling plans, sample frame acquisition, data collection (qualitative and quantitative), statistical and text analysis, and presentations (written and oral). Results are used by counsel in litigation and by organizations seeking to provide better services or products, social service agencies, and policy designers.
Learn more about Dr. Dorfman and Dr. Lawton.