Professor at the Paris School of Economics and Researcher at the French National Research Institute for Agricultural, Food and Environment (INRAE)

Karen Macours is a professor at the Paris School of Economics and researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). She maintains an active research portfolio focused on the micro-economic constraints to agricultural productivity and rural poverty reduction in developing countries. Much of her current research involves impact assessment related to agricultural research, the evaluation of programs addressing rural households’ productive and human capital investments, and related measurement and methodological questions. She has led field projects in Sub Sahara Africa, Latin America and Asia, and has worked with a variety of stakeholders (national governments, NGOs, bilateral and multilaterals agencies). 

She is a board member and co-lead of the health sector for JPAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab), member of the board of directors of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Market Risk and Resilience, co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics, associate editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, lead of the development research group at Paris School of Economics, a fellow of BREAD (Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development) and an affiliate of CEPR (Center for Economic Policy Research) and EUDN (European Universities Development Network). 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.