Marcel Fafchamps

Marcel Fafchamps is the Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. He has held academic positions at Stanford University since 1989, with previous appointments at Oxford University (1999-2013) and the World Bank (1998-99).

His educational background includes:

• Licence in Law from Université Catholique de Louvain (1978)
• Licence in Economics from Université Catholique de Louvain (1980)
• Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from UC Berkeley (1989)

Fafchamps is a leading scholar in development economics with a particular focus on African economies. His research spans several interconnected areas including social networks, risk sharing mechanisms, agricultural economics, household decision-making, and experimental approaches to development questions. His work often employs rigorous empirical methods including field experiments conducted across multiple African countries. He has made significant contributions to understanding how social networks function as economic institutions, how households manage risk in environments with limited formal insurance, and how information flows through social connections to influence economic outcomes.

His recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on experimental methods to understand economic behavior in developing contexts. The 15 most recent articles show a consistent emphasis on social networks, experimental economics, and African development issues, with field sites primarily in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Côte d'Ivoire. His work bridges theoretical economic concepts with practical development applications.

Among his notable achievements is winning the Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award from the American Agricultural Economists Association.

Fafchamps teaches PhD students in development economics at Stanford. His current research involves multiple collaborative projects examining topics such as management practices, social networks, risk sharing, and experimental approaches to development questions. He maintains active research partnerships with scholars across multiple institutions and regularly conducts fieldwork in Africa.