In September 2025, Dr. Fan Fan joined the University of Florida IFAS Food and Resource Economics Department as an assistant professor of agribusiness.
Fan, who earned her Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics in 2025, focuses her research on agribusiness finance, agricultural risk management, crop insurance, and applied econometrics.
In addition to holding a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics and her M.S. in Economics from Texas A&M University, Fan also brings to this position several years of direct experience in the financial industry serving as Vice President at multiple institutions, where her work involved credit risk analysis and big-data-driven risk modeling.
“Agriculture faces unique risks—from weather shocks to market volatility—that directly affect livelihoods, food security, and public spending,” Fan said. “During my training and later professional experience, I became particularly interested in how financial tools and insurance mechanisms can help manage these risks more effectively. That intersection of economics, uncertainty, and real-world decision-making ultimately drew me to this field of study.”
Fan’s research focuses on agribusiness finance, agricultural risk management, and crop insurance, using applied econometric and data-driven approaches to study how farmers and agricultural systems can manage risk more efficiently under uncertainty. Specifically, she examines how climate variability, production risk, and financial constraints affect farm performance, insurance outcomes, and the overall resilience of agricultural systems.
Her unique background allows Fan to equip students in her Financial Planning in Agribusiness classes with not only textbook examples, but applications drawn from her own lived experience.
“In the classroom, I emphasize practical applications and real-world decision-making, often drawing on examples from my professional experience to help students see how economic and financial concepts are applied beyond textbooks and exams,” Fan said. “This approach helps students better connect theory with practice.”
Meanwhile, in her research program, Fan said her background shapes how she thinks about critical concepts in Agribusiness such as risk, incentives, financial tools, and system-level stability.
“It leads me to focus not only on generating rigorous theoretical insights, but also on whether proposed models and policies are realistic, implementable, and genuinely useful to farmers, insurers, and policymakers making decisions under uncertainty,” Fan said.
Currently, Fan has two major projects she is working on related to crop insurance policies, both aiming to strengthen agricultural risk management by combining rigorous data-driven methods with policy-relevant insights.
“One project I am excited to highlight examines risk pooling and systemic risk in U.S. crop insurance programs. This research studies how weather-related risks are correlated across regions and how geographic diversification can reduce overall exposure in insurance portfolios,” Fan said. “Another complementary project focuses on improving crop insurance pricing by specifically modeling the lower tail of yield distributions, where catastrophic losses occur. This research develops a model-combination framework that integrates multiple forecasting approaches to better capture extreme downside risk.”
Now that she has joined the University of Florida, Fan said she is most looking forward to contributing to the land-grant mission. To her, this includes collaboration amongst colleagues on research that is both methodologically rigorous and directly relevant, and mentoring students to help them build the analytical and professional skills needed to address complex agricultural and financial challenges in a rapidly changing environment.
“What I am most looking forward to in this role at UF is contributing to a land-grant institution that is deeply connected to real-world agricultural challenges, where research, teaching, and public impact are closely integrated,” Fan said. “Florida agriculture faces unique risks related to climate variability, extreme weather, and financial uncertainty, making it an important setting for research on risk management, insurance, and agricultural finance.”
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