Kathy Baylis

Kathy Baylis is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She is also adjunct faculty at the University of Illinois’s Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics. Her research focuses on evaluating agricultural, conservation, and trade policies and their impacts on environmental outcomes and food security. Baylis has secured over $30 million in grants and mentored over 30 graduate/post-doctoral students, contributing to over 60 journal articles and book chapters.

Education: PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley (2003), specializing in international agricultural policy and trade. Prior roles include staff economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors (2001-2002) and Executive Secretary at the National Farmers Union in Canada (mid-1990s).

Research interests span climate-food nexus, policy design for deforestation reduction, and the effectiveness of subsidy programs. Her work combines econometric analysis with machine learning to address challenges in food security, environmental conservation, and development economics.

Key contributions include studies on NAFTA’s wage impacts, tropical forest conservation efficacy, and applications of neural networks in deforestation prediction. She co-authored a textbook on U.S. and Canadian agricultural policy.

Labs/Teams: Affiliated with the EDGE Lab at UCSB, focusing on interdisciplinary environmental and development research.