Marcel Fafchamps' Home Page



Job market and placement information

I am placement officer for the Department. A (non-exhaustive) list of DPhil students currently on the job market appears here. Any confirmed DPhil student or any recent DPhil graduate (up to three years from graduation) from the Oxford Economics Department can be listed if they so wish. The placement listing is intended for those seeking full-time employment, not for short-term consulting, part-time teaching, and internships. If you wish to be listed, send me an email with the following information:

  • Name:
  • Address:
  • Tel:
  • Email address:
  • Web page address (optional):
  • Thesis Title:
  • Supervisor:
  • Other Advisors:
  • Research Fields:

    I also run a listserver where I circulate job related information. If your are an Oxford student or graduate, you may enroll simply by sending a message to econjobs-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. Ezmlm will send you a confirmation request, and once you reply to it, you should receive a message confirming that you are a subscriber.

    In this document, I have put together information for job seekers. It contains many useful sources of information on research jobs in the UK, the US, and elsewhere.

    This unpublished document, written in April 2001 by John Cowley, gives information on how to approach the American Job Market. It also contains references to other relevant material as well as information on salaries. This other document, written by two graduate students and myself, gives information about the American and European job markets. It contains the addresses of various relevant websites.

    John Cowley's summary of various ranking of US Economic Departments appears in this table. It is based on a variety of published sources references cited in his article. This 1999 article published in the European Economic Review ranks all European (and Israeli) Economics Departments and compares them with US Departments. There is a follow-up article by the same authors that also ranks academic journals. This 2001 unpublished article by Tom Coupe of the Free University of Brussels provides another recent ranking that includes all Economics Departments in the world. Further references on rankings of economics departments are given at the end of this document.

    If this is still not enough, feel free to download this file that contains several published articles on the US job market for economists and the results from a recent survey of hiring and salaries in 2003. Keep in mind that this is a large file (over 6 MB) -- not advisable over a low speed connection... Last but not least, this article ranks department according to how they place their economics graduates in the academic job market.


    General Information

    My office number is 2108 in the Department of Economics and my office phone number is +44-1865-281446. In case you need to send me anything, the mail address is Department of Economics, Oxford University, Manor Road, Oxford OX2 8DS and the fax number is +44-1865-281447. My email address is marcel dot fafchamps at economics dot ox dot ac dot uk.

    I am Professor of Development Economics in the Economics Department at Oxford University. I am also a Professorial Fellow at Mansfield College and serve as Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. I currently share my teaching among the MPhil graduate program in Economics and the MSc in Development Economics. I also serve as DPhil (PhD) placement officer for the department (see above). I am not involved in undergraduate teaching and tutoring.

    For more information about the Centre consult the Centre's web site.


    Who I am

    I was born in Belgium in 1955. As an undergraduate, I attended the Universite Catholique de Louvain and got a 'Licence' in Law in 1978 and a 'Licence' in economics in 1980. After my military service, I spent nearly five years working for the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency overlooking issues of employment, income distribution, and vocational training. My responsability was rural development. I was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia but I had to travel to all parts of Africa. From 1981 to 1985 I must have visited more than 20 of the 50 or so African states. I met my wife in Ethiopia and we got married in Nairobi in 1983.

    Because I had developed a stong interest in research during my years in Africa, I went back to school in 1986. In August 1989 I completed a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of California at Berkeley for which I won an Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award from American Agricultural Economists Association. In the process of getting my degree I also spent 8 months in Hyderabad, India. During my stay I travelled throughout India and had an opportunity to compare the way people live there with what I had seen in Africa. Except for a quarter teaching at the University of Chicago in 1995, I spent the period between September 1989 and the Summer of 1996 teaching at the Food Research Institute.

    Following the untimely closure of the Institute, I moved to the Department of Economics at Stanford where I taught for two years. I spent the 1998-99 academic year on sabbatical leave in the Research Department of the World Bank. I have been in the Department of Economics of Oxford University since July 1999, except for a sabbatical year spent in the department of economics at Harvard (2005-6).

    Here is a copy of my CV.


    What I teach

    MPhil in Economics

    Development Economics Core Course -- Michaelmas 2009

  • Lecture notes for all four lectures.

    Treatment effects -- Advanced Econometrics -- Hilary 2010

  • Lecture notes for all four lectures.

  • Stata simulation programs

    Growth Theory -- Advanced Macroeconomics -- Michaelmas 2009

  • Notes for lecture 1.
  • Notes for lecture 2.
  • Notes for lecture 3.
  • Notes for lecture 4.
  • Notes for lecture 5.
  • Notes for lecture 6.

    Network Analysis -- Advanced Theory -- Hilary 2010

  • Notes for all lectures.

    To make ngreg accessible to Stata, unzip the following files in your c:\ado\personal directory or in your work directory.

  • Stata ado and help files for dyadic regression with corrected standard errors.

    MSc in Development Economics

    Microeconomic theory core -- Michaelmas 2009

  • Notes for lecture 1.
  • Notes for lecture 2.
  • Notes for lecture 3.
  • Notes for lecture 4.
  • Notes for lecture 5.
  • Notes for lecture 6.
  • Notes for lecture 7.
  • Notes for lecture 8.
  • Notes for lecture 9.
  • Notes for lecture 10.
  • Notes for lecture 11.
  • Notes for lecture 12.

    Additional resources:

  • Duclos's textbook on poverty and inequality.

    Homeworks for academic year 2008/2009.

  • Homework 1 (with solution).
  • Homework 2 (with solution).

    Homeworks for academic year 2007/2008.

  • Homework 1 (with solution).
  • Homework 2 (with solution).

    Homeworks for academic year 2006/2007.

  • Homework 1 (with solution).
  • Homework 2 (with solution).

    My research interests

    My research interests have evolved over time. Currently, my research revolves primarily around the following topics:
  • social networks;
  • intrahousehold allocation;
  • risk coping strategies and poverty.

    Here is a list of my publications:

    Most of my unpublished papers are available in PDF format on this homepage. To download them, simply click on them.

    To see and print a PDF file on your computer, you first need to install Acrobat Reader from Adobe. You also must configure Netscape for it using the Options | Preferences | Helper Applications | PDF files to the directory where you have installed the Acrobat Reader.

    Here are some of the papers I am working on:

    Welcome to Africa

    In the mid 1990's I developed a computer simulation game to interest my Stanford undergraduates to rural life in Africa. The game was subsequently published by Walnut Creek CDRom. The CD has now long been out of print but I still receive occasional expressions of interest from people wishing to use it as instructional tool.

    I have therefore decided to make it available here in zipped form. Beware of the fact that it is over 66 MB large. You will need to unzip it onto your harddisk, and to install it by running the install.exe program. Enjoy.