Stefan Dercon

Stefan Dercon is Chief Economist at the Department for International Development, London. He is also Professor of Development Economics at the University of Oxford, associated to the Department of International Development and to the Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford. He is Professorial Fellow at Wolfson College.  Previously, he has held positions teaching economics at Jesus College, Oxford, the University of Leuven (Belgium) and Addis Ababa University. He also acted as a Programme Director for the World Institute of Development Economics (WIDER), United Nations University.

Stefan Dercon’s research has emphasized the application of microeconomics and statistics to the analysis of development problems. He has published in top general and field journals in economics and other disciplines on diverse topics, including risk and poverty, the foundations of growth in poor societies, agriculture and rural institutions, migration, political economy, childhood poverty, social and geographic mobility, micro-insurance, and measurement issues related to poverty and vulnerability. He has worked extensively in Ethiopia, Tanzania and India.

At DFID, he is responsible for strategy and research, especially on the economic aspects of development, and for the use of evidence to improve the quality of development policy design and evaluation across a wide range of development issues.