Do You Remember? - Mindy Mallory

photo of Mindy Mallory

Years at CARD: 2006–2009

Current Occupation: Associate Professor, University of Illinois

Currently Resides in: Urbana, Illinois

Mindy Mallory credits some good luck, and her singing, for helping her get a research assistant position at CARD. “Good luck led me to apply to ISU and when a nice offer of admittance and assistantship arrived in my mailbox I took it! I ended up in CARD after impressing Dermot Hayes with my country music singing ability at the department holiday party,” she said. Though she may credit a little luck with getting her to CARD, she took an interest in economics early in life. “I was always a ‘marginal thinker’ in my daily life; thinking about what the best next step was among competing alternatives. Taking my first econ class gave me a framework and language to that kind of thinking, so I wanted to pursue more,” she said.

Mallory took a position as a research assistant for Dermot Hayes in 2006, right at the beginning of the ethanol boom. “There was a sense of urgency that the agricultural world was changing before our eyes,” she said, “and there was a lot of academic work that needed to be done to understand the impacts.” Mallory says the research opportunity allowed her to see firsthand how economic policy could impact both agriculture and the environment. “Also, I learned how important synergy is to research efforts. I remember being amazed at the volume of scholarship that comes out of CARD—I still am,” she said.

Currently, Mallory holds an associate professorship at the University of Illinois, where she studies prices and risk in commodity markets. “Recently, I’m working on futures market microstructure, which explores how price discovery, risk, and liquidity costs influence the performance of commodity futures markets like the corn, soybeans, and livestock contracts. When I’m not studying commodity prices, I bring tools from finance to help understand and mitigate risk in environmental and natural resource markets,” she said.

Mindy lives in Urbana with her husband, Sung Kim, and their two children Wynton (3) and Cindy (2). In her spare time she enjoys running and biking with her kids.