Gil Medeiros De Paula, Ph.D
Dr. DePaula received his Ph.D. in Environmental Economics from Yale University. He joined Cal Poly in 2026 as an Associate Professor in the Agricultural Business Department, after serving as Assistant Professor of Economics at Iowa State University and as an affiliate of its Center for Agricultural and Rural Development. He also holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Before academia, he worked as a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Brazil and held management positions at Progress Energy. He teaches Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Personnel Management, and he received Iowa State's Faculty Early Achievement in Teaching Award.
Dr. DePaula's research uses applied econometrics to study technology adoption, climate adaptation, and environmental policy in agriculture. Topics include how bundled contracts drove the Brazilian soybean boom, the economic value of farmer networks for pest management, and the environmental impacts of agricultural intensification. His work has appeared in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Development Economics, Land Economics, Environment and Development Economics, and Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, where his article was selected as the 2025 Article of the Year. He currently has research projects in both Brazil and California. His Brazil projects examine how water reservoirs and migration help rural communities adapt to drought in the semi-arid Northeast, and how deforestation affects water quality and quantity. His California projects study how water and labor scarcity are reshaping agricultural land use, and the economic value of low cost soil sensors for irrigation and nitrogen management.
Education
- Ph.D. in Environmental Economics, Yale University
- M.E.Sc. in Environmental Economics, Yale University
- MBA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Research Interests
- Technology Adoption
- Climate Adaptation
- Water Resource Economics
- Brazilian Agriculture
- Applied Econometrics
