David Bell

David E. Bell is the George M. Moffett Professor of Agriculture and Business at Harvard Business School. He is chair of the school’s marketing faculty and is also responsible for all of HBS faculty recruiting.

He runs the annual Agribusiness Seminar for executives and teaches an MBA course on the same topic. He studies all aspects of the food chain, from farming to distribution to trends in consumer eating habits.

David is an expert on decision analysis and risk management. He has published many papers on utility theory, the best known being on regret as a psychological aspect of risk taking. In recognition of his research, he was awarded the Ramsey Medal in 2001, the George Cantor award in 2015, and elected as an INFORMS Fellow in 2011.

During nearly 40 years on the HBS faculty, David has taught a variety of courses to both MBAs and executives, including marketing, retailing, risk management and economics. Most recently he taught the MBA required ethics course.

He has held a number of administrative positions at HBS including head of the Program for Management Development (PMD, 2002-6), terms as chairman of the School’s marketing faculty (2002-8, 2013-) and as Senior Associate Dean for Strategy and Recruiting (2008-12, 2016-).

David has degrees in mathematics from Oxford University (BA, 1971) and MIT (PhD, 1973). Outside HBS, David is an active speaker and consultant. He currently serves as an advisor to Paine & Partners, and as a director of Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation.