Spiro Stefanou is Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at Penn State University and former Administrator of the USDA’s Economic Research Service, where he led the agency through the pandemic while also rebuilding a depleted agency to full staffing, hiring 70% of the staff and 80% of the leadership team; opening two new office facilities in Washington D.C. and Kansas City; and, modernizing the ERS IT infrastructure. As the head of a principal Federal Statistical Agency, he took a leadership role in designing the Federal Statistical system structure for implementing the directives of the Foundations of Evidence Based Policy Making Act of 2018.
His work explores how firms grow, innovate, and adapt—especially when today’s decisions shape tomorrow’s production possibilities. He is widely recognized for his contributions to understanding technology adoption, dynamic capabilities, and productivity, and for showing how firms can unlock growth by reducing waste, scaling effectively, and pushing the technological frontier.
Over his career, he has held leadership and faculty roles at the University of Florida, Penn State, and Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He is a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and has held distinguished fellowships across Europe, including at the University of Crete, Wageningen University, and the European University Institute. His served as co-Editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Managing Editor of the Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy, and on the Board of Directors. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of California, Davis, his M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland and a B.A. in Anthropology from George Washington University. His insights have been featured in major media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CBS News Sunday Morning, and NBC Nightly News.