An agricultural policy and labor economics expert currently with the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been appointed to fill the newly established Frank H. Buck Jr. Chair in Agricultural Business at the University of California, Davis. Daniel A. Sumner, currently USDA deputy assistant secretary for economics, will assume the new post in UC Davis' agricultural economics department in February 1993. He will be the first faculty member to fill the chair, funded by a private endowment with the goal of supporting applied agricultural research to benefit production agriculture in California. "At no time in the history of California agriculture have challenges been greater and research such as that by Professor Sumner more important," said Chancellor Theodore L. Hullar. "He will be a great asset to our campus, to agriculture and the state." The Frank H. Buck Jr. Chair in Agricultural Business was created with a $650,000 endowment from Eva Benson Buck of Vacaville, Calif. She established the chair in memory of her late husband, Frank H. Buck Jr., a congressman and agriculturist from Solano County. Sumner, who grew up in Solano County and whose family continues to farm there, has published research articles covering almost every aspect of agricultural policy and a range of commodities. As a professor of agricultural economics at North Carolina State University since 1978, he has studied policies and regulations in a wide variety of research areas, including farm programs, agricultural trade issues, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, structural issues in agriculture, the impact of tax laws on industrial organization, and economic development in foreign countries. In the area of labor economics, Sumner has conducted extensive studies of the interaction between farming and non-farming labor markets. In another major area of work, he has investigated the effects of inflation on the economic well-being of the elderly. Since 1986, Sumner has been on leave from his faculty position in order to serve in his current USDA post, as well as in the positions of resident fellow in the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy and senior staff economist for the President's Council of EconomicAdvisors. Sumner earned his bachelor's degree in agricultural management at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, in 1971. He received a master's degree in economics at Michigan State University in 1973 and master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago in 1977 and 1978.