Marcel Fafchamps

Marcel Fafchamps is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Fafchamps is a professor by courtesy in the department of economics at Stanford University. His research interests include economic development, market institutions, and social networks. Currently, his research focuses on entrepreneurship, factor markets, and the efficiency of social networks in Africa and South Asia. Fafchamps studied law and economics at the Université Catholique de Louvain and holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to joining FSI, Fafchamps served as a professor of development economics at Oxford University, a director of the Center for the Study of African Economies, and as a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He has also worked with the World Bank and the International Labour Organization. 

Along with numerous published articles, he has authored two books, Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence, published by MIT Press in 2004, and Rural Poverty, Risk, and Development, published in 2003 by Elgar Press. Fafchamps serves as the editor-in-chief of Economic Development and Cultural Change. He is a senior fellow with the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a research fellow with Center for Economic and Policy Research, and an associate with University of California’s Center for Effective Global Action.