Office Address:
Richard H Barry Hall 400
sandro.steinbach@ndsu.edu
Tel: +1 701-231-7459
Office Hours: Please email me directly to schedule an in-person meeting or via Zoom. In doing so, please indicate three 30-minute periods that would work for you.
Staff Support:
Shanna Pugh
Richard H Barry Hall 400
shanna.pugh@ndsu.edu
Tel: +1 701-231-7441
I am the Farmers Union Endowed Professor of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at North Dakota State University, where I have been on the faculty since 2022. I direct the Agricultural Risk Policy Center and the North Dakota Center for Agricultural Policy and Trade Studies, two applied research programs focused on agricultural policy, risk, trade, and market developments. I am also a Faculty Scholar of the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth and a Visiting Scholar and Consultant at the United States Department of Agriculture.
I served on the Executive Board of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium and as a Guest Editor for the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, the World Economy, the European Review of Agricultural Economics, and Food Policy. I am co-organizing the 2026 IATRC Annual Meeting on "From Farm to Everywhere: The Full Spectrum of Agricultural Transportation." Among other distinctions, I received the Outstanding Published Research Award from the Western Agricultural Economics Association (2024 and 2025), the Bruce Gardner Memorial Prize for Applied Policy Analysis of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (2025, honorable mention, and 2026), the NACTA Teaching Award of Merit (2025), and the Excellence in Research & Communication Award from the Food Distribution Research Society (2021). I was selected as the Farm Foundation's 2024 Agricultural Economics, Trade, and Sustainability Fellow.
My teaching and research fields include agricultural policy, risk management, and international trade. My most recent work focuses on the implications of market and policy shocks for global supply chains and investment activities. I examine the interplay between market structures, firm behavior, and economic welfare at various spatial and institutional scales. My research employs applied economics and data science methods to address research questions relevant to agribusinesses, international trade and policy, human and animal health, and environmental sustainability. My recent work has appeared in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Economic Journal, Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, the Canadian Journal of Economics, the Review of International Economics, Food Policy, and the NBER Working Paper Series. As of September 2026, RePEc ranks me among the top 2% of economists based on publications over the past decade. I am frequently interviewed by regional, national, and international media on agricultural trade and policy, commodity markets, agribusiness, and the effects of major economic and geopolitical developments on U.S. agriculture.
I am a German citizen and received undergraduate and master’s degrees from Humboldt University of Berlin, followed by an M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis. I completed my doctorate in Economics at ETH Zurich in 2018 and subsequently joined the University of Connecticut as an Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics. I am married to Natia Sarauli, and we have three children, Eveline, Emma, and Anina.
I provide economic consulting, expert witness, and litigation-support services in agricultural and trade policy, agribusiness, market analysis, and risk management. My work includes economic impact assessments, business and asset valuation, damages analysis, regulatory and policy analysis, market and competition studies, and the evaluation of complex commercial and trade disputes. I use applied econometrics, economic modeling, and large-scale data analysis to develop independent economic evidence for legal counsel, businesses, industry organizations, government agencies, and other clients. I have worked on matters involving agricultural markets, international trade, supply chains, market structure and competition, investment, regulatory change, and other questions where economic analysis is central to strategic, legal, or policy decisions.
Click here for my Google Scholar profile, here for my resume, and here for my LinkedIn profile.