Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department at University of Oxford. He is Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies.
He combines his academic career with work as a policy advisor. Between 2011 and 2017, he was Chief Economist of the Department of International Development (DFID). Between 2020 and 2022, he was the Development Policy Advisor to successive Foreign Secretaries at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. His research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to achieve change.
