Professor Stefan Dercon FBA

Summary

Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, jointly appointed to the Blavatnik School of Government and the Department of Economics.

He is also a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. He has long been engaged at the intersection of academic research and public policy, particularly in international development.

Born and raised in Belgium, he holds degrees in economics and philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven and a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. His previous academic posts have included positions at the universities of Leuven and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

His research explores the persistence of poverty, and the failures of markets and politics in low-income countries, particularly in Africa and South Asia. He has worked extensively on risk and poverty, behavioural development economics, agricultural transformation, and the political economy of growth.

Much of his recent work examines how institutions, politics, and elite incentives shape development outcomes and why some countries achieve sustained progress while others stagnate.

He is the author of Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose (2022), which draws together his academic and policy insights. Between 2011 and 2017, he served as Chief Economist at the UK Department for International Development (DFID). From 2020 to 2022, he was Development Policy Advisor to the Foreign Secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. In these roles, he championed the use of rigorous evidence in policy design and delivery. In 2018, he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for services to economics and international development.