Olena Sambucci is a Project Scientist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics of the University of California, Davis, where she completed her Ph.D. in 2015.
Dr. Sambucci’s cannabis research focuses on supply and demand in cannabis markets and substitution between legal and illegal cannabis. She has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications and government reports for the California Department of Cannabis Control on these topics.
Dr. Sambucci has also studied and published on wine economics. Her wine economics work focuses on the use of forecasting tools to mitigate production risk from disease in vineyards, and the economic benefits of new vineyard technology. She spent time researching the structure of the U.S. grape growing industry, with the emphasis on the production and pricing of winegrapes. She was also involved in an SCRI project that focused on breeding grape varieties with improved traits, where she worked on estimating the economic value of powdery mildew resistance, one of the main traits targeted for improvement in new varieties of grapes.
In her free time, Dr. Sambucci flies planes and teaches flying lessons.