Food and Resource Economics Ph.D. candidate Suraj Gurung placed third in the Job Market Paper Competition at the 2026 Southern Applied Economics Association (SAEA) annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. 
A job market paper presents a piece of the author’s original research with the goal of demonstrating their aptitude as an economist and potential job candidate.
As Gurung prepares for graduation and continues to refine his work for journal publication, he said the SAEA recognition was not only an honor but also a meaningful validation of the research direction he has pursued throughout his doctoral training.
“The SAEA job market paper competition features a lot of strong work, so placing third feels like a meaningful signal that the question and approach resonate with the broader applied economics community,” Gurung said. “It also gives me momentum as I continue refining the paper for publication.”
Gurung’s paper was titled Will Private Credentials be More Effective than Regulatory Oversight in Signaling Food Safety in Emerging Food Markets? It was co-authored with his advisors, Dr. Lijun (Angelia) Chen and Dr. Zhifeng Gao, both faculty members in Food and Resource Economics at the University of Florida.
“They pushed me to sharpen the core contribution, tighten the story, and be very clear about the ‘so what’ and policy relevance,” Gurung said. “Their feedback on framing, identification, and how to communicate results to a broad audience made a big difference in preparing for the competition.”
In the paper, Gurung examined how regulatory oversight compares with private food safety credentials in shaping where consumers choose to buy food across different establishments. The research is motivated by the rapid growth of alternative business models, such as home kitchen operations, where regulatory enforcement varies widely across locations. Understanding whether private credentials can compensate for limited regulatory oversight is important for designing policies that protect consumers without stifling innovation and entrepreneurship.
Gurung said he was drawn to this project because it sits at the intersection of consumer behavior, institutional trust, and public policy, where small changes in market signals can have meaningful effects on consumer and business decisions. He plans to extend this work by testing the mechanisms in stronger causal settings and examining how disclosure and transparency policies influence both firm compliance and consumer behavior.
For more information about Gurung, please visit our department’s job market candidate page.
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