Karen Macours is a chaired professor at the Paris School of Economics (PSE), and senior researcher (directrice de recherche) at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). Her research focusses on agricultural productivity and rural poverty reduction in developing countries, impact assessment related to agricultural R&D, the evaluation of programs addressing households’ productive and human capital investments (early childhood, health, nutrition, education) and related measurement and methodological questions. 

She currently serves as the chair of the CGIAR’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA), co-chair of the health sector and the Learning for All Initiative and board member of JPAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab), member of the board of directors of BREAD (Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development) and the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Market Risk and Resilience, and is an affiliate of CEPR (Center for Economic Policy Research) and EUDN (European Universities Development Network).

She is co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics, and associate editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and co-organizer of the Virtual Development Economics Seminar Series: VDEV/CEPR/BREAD.

Google scholar profile

She previously was associate professor of international economics at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. She received her MS in Agricultural Engineering from the K.U. Leuven and her PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

New publications and working papers

Impact of Small Farmers' Access to Improved Seeds and Deforestation in DR Congo (with Tanguy Bernard, Sylvie Lambert and Margaux Vinez), Nature Communications, 2023, 14:1603,  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37278-2

   Open access replication data

Education, Income and Mobility: Experimental Impacts of Childhood Exposure to Progresa after 20 Years (with M. Caridad Araujo)

 R&R American Economic Review

 PRESS: Voxdev Podcast. Video, Examplars in Global Health

Experimental Evidence from a Conditional Cash Transfer Program: Schooling, Learning, Fertility, and Labor Market Outcomes After 10 Years (with Tania Barham and John Maluccio), 2021. R&R Journal of European Economic Association

Input subsidies, credit constraints, and expectations of future transfers: Evidence from Haiti (with Jeremie Gignoux, Daniel Stein and Kelsey Wright), 2022. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12337

   Open access replication data

Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies: Experimental Evidence with Lessons for Climate Change Adaptation (with Patrick Premand and Renos Vakis), 2022. Economic Journal,132 (647):2438–2470.  https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac018

PRESS: Nature Climate Change News and Views

 Open access: replication data MPV  and online appendix MPV2022 

Texting Parents about Early Childhood Development: Behavioural Changes and Unintended Social Effects (with Oscar Barrera, Patrick Premand and Renos Vakis), World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9492.

Social Learning in Agriculture: Does Smallholder Heterogeneity Impede Technology Diffusion in Sub-Saharan Africa? (with Luc Behaghel and Jeremie Gignoux), CEPR Discussion Paper 15220. 

   PRESS: Voxdev

Shining a Brigher Light: Comprehensive Evidence on Adoption and Diffusion of CGIAR-related Innovations in Ethiopia. (with Frederic Kosmowski, Solomon Alemu, Paola Mallia and James Stevenson). Rome: Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA). 

   Open access Replication data

Experimental Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood and School-Age Exposure to a Conditional Cash Transfer Program (with Teresa Molina Millan, John Maluccio and Luis Tejerina), 2020, Journal of Development Economics, 143(102385).

    PRESS: Foreign Affairs

Reconciling yield gains in agronomic trials with returns under African smallholder conditions (with Rachid Laajaj, Cargele Masso, Moses Thuita, and Bernard Vanlauwe), Scientific Reports, 10, 14286 (2020).

   PRESS: Forbes, Voxdev talk Podcast

   Open access Replication data 

Measuring Skills in Developing Countries (with Rachid Laajaj), 2021. Journal of Human Reources, 56 (4), 1254-1295,

   PRESS: VoxDev

  Online appendix with detailed information on methods to facilitate use in other applications

  Open acces Replication data

Challenges to Capture the Big Five Personality Traits in non-WEIRD populations (with Rachid Laajaj, Daniel Alejandro Pinzon Hernandez, Omar Arias, Samuel Gosling, Jeff Potter, Marta Rubio-Codina, and Renos Vakis), 2019. Science Advances, 5(7): eaaw5226. 

   PRESS: NPR (National Public Radio), Discover Magazine, New Scientist, ORF, N+1, VoxDev,

                 De Morgen, Medical Xpress, De Volkskrant, Spektrum, Parsing Science (podcast)

   Open access Replication data

Impacts on school entry of exposure since birth to a conditional cash transfer programme in El Salvador (with Ana Sanchez Chico, John Maluccio and Marco Stampini), 2020.  J Dev Eff., DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2020.1773900

Long Term Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers: Review of the Evidence (with Teresa Molina-Millan, Tania Barham, John Maluccio, Marco Stampini), 2019. World Bank Research Observer, 34: 119-159.

Farmers' Demand and the Traits and Diffusion of Agricultural Innovations in Developing Countries, 2019. Annual Review of Resource Economics, 11, 483-499.