Victor Funes-Leal

Victor Funes-Leal

PhD in Agricultural and Consumer Economics

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Biography

I am an applied microeconomist, and my research is related to the impact of technological innovations in Developed and Developing countries. I will receive my Ph.D. in Agricultural and Consumer Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Spring 2024.

My current work investigates the consequences of introducing genomic testing in the American dairy genetics market. I use matching and differences-in-differences methods to construct a set of synthetic lines to estimate the effect of genomic selection. My research on this topic fills a critical gap in the literature on the economic analysis of animal genetics markets; so far, Economists have paid little attention to using genetic traits and pedigree as explanatory factors for market outcomes.

My other work has investigated topics such as hedonic pricing and climate adaptation. In another article, I study the introduction of crossbreeds to adapt cattle to climate change and how to tease out patterns of adoption for genetic traits by cattle ranchers in northern Argentina. I have also studied how farmers adapt to extreme weather events in Northern India by analyzing their response to floods, the likelihood of reporting such events, and how they impact farmers’ welfare using flood extent data from NASA and ground-level data from a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Starting August 2024, I will be joining the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

My Job Market paper can be found here.

My CV can be found here.

Interests

  • Production Economics
  • Applied Econometrics
  • Development Economics

Education

  • PhD in Agricultural and Consumer Economics, 2024

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  • MSc in Statistics, 2023

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  • MA in Economics, 2015

    National University of La Plata

  • BA in Economics, 2007

    National University of Tucuman

Publications

Working Papers

Information provision and network externalities (Job Market Paper)

We use a differences-in-differences with a matched control group method to estimate the long-term impacts of genomic selection in the American market for dairy cattle genetics. Genomic selection is an application of big data that uses the entire genome of an animal to test for the presence of a set of traits. Unlike pre-existing technologies that require several years of data from a bull’s daughters, an animal can be tested as soon as it is born, allowing breeders to identify the “best” animals much faster. Using a data set of all bulls marketed in the US from 2000 to 2020, we find that genomic selection significantly increased genetic gains for all measured traits, particularly milk production, protein, and fat yields, but also increased levels of inbreeding depression, a reduction in the performance of animals whose parents have a high degree of relatedness, as a consequence of genetics companies breeding more animals from established lines to respond to an increased “brand” loyalty towards such lines. Our estimation shows that the increased inbreeding rate of American bulls caused a loss of between 2.5 to 6 billion dollars to the entire industry from 2011 to 2019. Solving this externality will require either a mechanism to internalize the harmful effects, such as paying a much higher price for more inbred sires, or a collective action mechanism to select which lines will be bred in the next generation.

Teaching

University of Illinois

Econ 471: Applied Econometrics

Teaching Assistant: Fall 2023

Syllabus

ACE 360: Spreadsheet Models and Applications

Teaching Assistant: Spring 2020

Syllabus

ACE 411: Environmental and Development Economics

Teaching Assistant: Fall 2019, 2020

Syllabus

National University of the Northeast

Mathematics for Economists

Lecturer: Spring 2017, 2018

Introductory Statistics

Lecturer: Fall 2017

National University of La Plata

Impact Evaluation of Public Policies

Teaching Assistant: Spring 2015

Contact