Why do opposition parties so often struggle to challenge aspiring autocrats in elections? I argue that elite economic coercion—the credible threat of economic retaliation against opposition-aligned elites—is a core, overlooked authoritarian strategy that erodes opposition candidate quality and electoral appeal. Incumbents leverage control over state institutions and resources to punish candidates and their families through firings, blacklisting, tax audits, and contract denials. This deters state-dependents from political entry, shrinking opposition parties’ talent pool. I use original data from Hungary’s autocratization episode. New panel data on the performance of candidate-connected firms documents widespread economic retaliation upon opposition political entry. A survey experiment with opposition elites demonstrates its negative effect on political ambition, while data on candidate backgrounds indicate a decline in opposition quality, particularly the share of candidates in high-quality state-dependent occupations. The findings highlight the key role of coercive economic retaliation in preventing successful opposition challenge during democratic decline.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Hanna Folsz is a 6th-year PhD Candidate in Political Science at Stanford University and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Her research examines the electoral challenges and opportunities in countering democratic decline. Her dissertation develops a theory of “opposition traps” to explain why opposition parties often struggle to challenge authoritarian dominant parties in autocratizing regimes, and why electoral turnover frequently emerges from new opposition formations. She brings evidence from Hungary’s autocratization since 2010 using a multi-method approach that combines original large-N datasets, text data, elite and mass surveys, and qualitative research.
Folsz grew up in Budapest, Hungary, and completed a B.A. in Economics and Politics at Durham University and an MSc in Political Science and Political Economy at the London School of Economics. In addition to English and Hungarian, she speaks Polish, Spanish, French, and German. She co-organizes the East European Politics Graduate Workshop (EEPGW) and is a member of the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (PovGov) and the Democracy and Polarization Lab (DPL) at Stanford.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E-008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456 Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E-008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Encina Hall, E111 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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hfolsz@stanford.edu
CDDRL Predoctoral Fellow, 2025-26
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Hanna Folsz is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on opposition parties in authoritarian dominant-party regimes, with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities they face in countering autocratization. More broadly, her work examines the causes and consequences of democratic backsliding, populism, media capture, and political favoritism — primarily in East-Central Europe and, secondarily, in Latin America. She uses a multi-method approach, including modern causal inference and text analysis techniques.
Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Political Science Association, among others. She is the co-founder and co-organizer of EEPGW, a monthly online graduate student workshop on East European politics, and a co-founder and regular contributor to The Hungarian Observer, the most widely read online newsletter on Hungarian politics and culture. At Stanford, she is an active member of CDDRL's Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (PovGov).
Women’s political participation remains persistently lower than men’s worldwide. This study evaluates whether a group-based training intervention can enhance women’s engagement in local governance. In a randomized controlled trial across 300 communities in southwest Nigeria, we recruited 3,900 politically unaffiliated women into newly formed women’s action committees (WACs). Control WACs received basic civic education, while treatment WACs received additional training aimed at strengthening women’s collective efficacy. Leveraging baseline and endline surveys, as well as behavioral data from a community grant competition, we find that the intervention significantly increased both the level and quality of women’s political participation. It also improved women’s perceptions of community leaders’ responsiveness. Such gains appear to be driven by increased perceptions of individual and collective agency. These findings underscore the potential of addressing both psychological and structural barriers to advance women’s political engagement.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Claire Adida is a Senior Fellow at FSI (CDDRL), Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and faculty co-director at the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) group, the Policy Design and Evaluation Lab (PDEL), and the Future of Democracy Initiative at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). She is an invited researcher with J-PAL’s Humanitarian Protection and Displaced Livelihoods Initiatives and an international advisory board member with CFREF’s Bridging Divides research program.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to the Philippines Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456 Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to the Philippines Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Encina Hall 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
cadida@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science
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Claire Adida is Senior Fellow at FSI (CDDRL), Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and faculty co-director at the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) group, the Policy Design and Evaluation Lab (PDEL), and the Future of Democracy Initiative at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). She is an invited researcher with J-PAL’s Humanitarian Protection and Displaced Livelihoods Initiatives and an international advisory board member with CFREF’s Bridging Divides research program.
Adida uses quantitative and field methods to investigate how countries manage new and existing forms of diversity, what exacerbates or alleviates outgroup prejudice and discrimination, and how vulnerable groups navigate discriminatory environments. She has published two books on immigrant integration and exclusion: Immigrant exclusion and insecurity in Africa; Coethnic strangers (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Why Muslim integration fails in Christian-heritage societies (with David Laitin and Marie-Anne Valfort, Harvard University Press, 2016). Her articles are published in the American Political Science Review, Science Advances, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Population Economics, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, and Political Science Research & Methods, among others.
Prior to joining Stanford, she was Assistant Professor (2010-2016), Associate Professor (2016-2022), and Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego, where she also served as the co-Director and Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (2018-2024). In 2021-2022, she served as Research Advisor to the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the U.S. Government’s Department of Health & Human Services. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 2010, her Master's in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (2003), and her Bachelor's in political science and communication studies from Northwestern University (2000).
In 2025, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) celebrated the 20th year of its Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program. This summer, 27 democracy leaders from across the developing world convened at Stanford for an intensive three-week training focused on democracy, good governance, and rule of law reform. Chosen from a highly competitive applicant pool, the fellows represent a diverse range of professional backgrounds and geographical regions, spanning civil society, public service, social enterprise, media, and technology. Launched in 2005, the program was previously known as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. It was renamed in 2023 in recognition of a gift from the Fisher family — Sakurako (Sako), ‘82, and William (Bill), MBA ‘84 — that endowed the program and secured its future.
Fellows were instructed by a leading Stanford faculty team composed of FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; CDDRL Mosbacher Director Kathryn Stoner; Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama; Senior Fellow in Global Democracy Larry Diamond; and Erik Jensen, Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School on new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote good governance, accountable politics, and find new ways to achieve economic development in their home countries.
Esteemed guest lectures were also presented by individuals from the greater FSI and Stanford communities, as well as by Damon Wilson, President of the National Endowment for Democracy; Joshua Achiam, Head of Mission Alignment at OpenAI; Austin Mejia, Product Manager and Head of AI for Wearables at Google and a founding member of the AI for Developing Countries Forum, which advocates for equitable AI development globally; and various speakers from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the leading think tank focused on the most critical economic and policy issues facing the nine-county Bay Area region.
During the program, the fellows delivered "TED"-style talks during our Fellow Spotlight Series, sharing personal stories about the struggles in their home countries, stories of their fight for justice, equality, and democracy, and stories of optimism and endurance. You can watch their talks in the playlist below:
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News
Announcing the 20th Anniversary Cohort of the Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program
In July 2025, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law will welcome a diverse cohort of 27 experienced practitioners from 18 countries who are working to advance democratic practices and economic and legal reform in contexts where freedom, human development, and good governance are fragile or at risk.
Confronting Repression: Strategies for Supporting Political Prisoners
A panel discussion featuring 2025 Fisher Family Summer Fellows Lilian Tintori and Waleed Shawky, along with Gulika Reddy, Director of the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School, explored the human cost of political imprisonment, the barriers advocates face, and the strategies available to combat them.
Ukrainian Leaders Advance Postwar Recovery Through Stanford Fellowship
Meet the four fellows participating in CDDRL’s Strengthening Democracy and Development Program and learn how they are forging solutions to help Ukraine rise stronger from the challenges of war.
The Fellow Spotlight Series is an inspiring and moving series of "TED"-style talks given by each of our 2025 Fisher Family Summer Fellows to share their backstories and discuss their work.
Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at The Europe Center, 2026
Professor of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna
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Birgit Lodes studied in Munich, at UCLA, and at Harvard University. She has been Full Professor at the University of Vienna since 2005, and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2008. Her research focuses on Beethoven, Schubert, and on music around 1500.
On August 15, President Donald Trump welcomed Vladimir Putin to the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. It was the first time since their sideline meeting in 2019 at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan that the two leaders have met, and the first time Putin has traveled to the United States since the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2015.
While President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine met with President Trump in Washington, DC the following week, some observers have expressed trepidation over the prospect of a deal being made between Russia and the United States without the input of Ukraine.
Writing for Brookings ahead of the summit, Steven Pifer, an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and The Europe Center, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine warned:
“Putin will seek to trap Trump into endorsing a position that incorporates the major elements of long-standing Russian demands. If Trump agrees, he will suffer unflattering comparisons to Neville Chamberlain, who agreed to surrender a large part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in 1938. While the Czechoslovakian government concluded it had no choice and accepted the territorial loss, the Ukrainians will say no. They will not embrace their own capitulation.”
Avoiding Putin’s Trap in Alaska
Steven Pifer examines whether Donald Trump prepared to play tough with Putin.
So how did the meeting in Anchorage actually play out?
In commentary on social media, FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul summarized the talks in the context of the Yalta Conference, an agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union made in the waning months of WWII that quickly fell apart when Joseph Stalin broke promises made to Western leaders to maintain and support democratic elections in Eastern Europe.
Alaska was not Yalta 2.0 . That’s the good news. But that’s a pretty low bar.
“What I think the worst outcome would be is if President Trump starts negotiating on behalf of the Ukrainians without the Ukrainians in the room. Trump needs something tangible, and I hope that doesn't make him too anxious to start negotiating on behalf of the Ukrainians because that would be a disaster. If he jams President Zelenskyy with something he can't accept, that would be the worst of all outcomes.”
Pifer echoed his relief about the lack of discussion over particulars about Ukraine between the two leaders, but also pointed out that the broadest goal of the meeting also hadn’t been met.
“The good news is, President Trump didn’t give away the store. I was concerned he might get into bargaining on details about Ukraine without the Ukrainians there, which would be to their detriment. But it seems Mr. Trump failed in his stated goal to achieve a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine,” said Pifer.
But even without a concrete policy outcome, Pifer says the Alaska meeting was an optical victory for Russia:
“The significance for Vladimir Putin is that the meeting happened in the first place. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine back in 2022, there’s been a boycott by Western leaders of any kind of face-to-face meeting with Putin. And by hosting him in Alaska, Trump broke that boycott. That is being played up in Moscow as a huge victory that Putin has been legitimized again.”
On Monday, August 18, President Zelenskyy and a cadre of other European leaders met with President Trump at the White House to discuss the Friday meeting and reinforce Europe’s positions and redlines against capitulation to Russian demands.
In analysis for Foreign Policy, Pifer outlined the stakes of this follow-up meeting for the European delegation:
“Zelenskyy and his European colleagues face a tricky challenge. They have to diplomatically offer suggestions to walk Trump back from a position that he does not appear to understand would be bad for Ukraine, bad for Europe, and bad for American interests. And they have to do so without setting off an explosion that could disrupt U.S.-Ukrainian and U.S.-European relations.”
How Disastrous Was the Trump-Putin Meeting?
Steven Pifer analyzes how the Trump-Putin summit went, and next steps Europe may take to assert their security interests.
McFaul is also cautious about the tone and tack of the discussions moving forward:
“I think it’s a good thing [the Europeans and Trump] are talking about security guarantees,“ he told Alex Witt on MSNBC. “But the devil is in the details. We keep hearing something about ‘NATO-like security guarantees.’ Why not just NATO security guarantees?"
The argument for building a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine based on NATO membership is a proposal McFaul has long supported.
“This notion that these guarantees are going to be something like NATO but less than NATO . . . if I were the Ukrainians, that would make me nervous. They had guarantees like that in 1994 called the Budapest Memorandum, and it meant nothing. It didn’t stop Putin from invading in 2014, and it didn’t stop him from launching a full-scale war in 2022,” McFaul reminded viewers.
“To me,” he argues, “it has to be NATO, not NATO-lite. The only way to do real, credible security guarantees for Ukraine is membership in NATO.”
In assessing the White House meeting with President Zelenskyy and European leadership, Rose Gottemoeller, the William J. Perry lecturer at CISAC and former deputy secretary of NATO, is cautiously optimistic.
“This was a major step along the road, and it was vital that the Europeans were there as well as Ukraine,” she told the CBC.
A seasoned negotiator with direct experience working on high-level diplomacy with Russia, Gottemoeller is no stranger to the long process of dealmaking with the Kremlin.
“There are many steps to get through. We are not there yet. As much as Trump would like to walk out of the Oval Office and say, ‘We got the deal done,’ I think there will be many more hoops to jump through before that is possible.”
Additional insights from our scholars on the Trump-Putin summit and White House meeting with Zelenskyy and other European leaders can be found at the following links:
Ukrainian Leaders Advance Postwar Recovery Through Stanford Fellowship
Meet the four fellows participating in CDDRL’s Strengthening Democracy and Development Program and learn how they are forging solutions to help Ukraine rise stronger from the challenges of war.
For a U.S. administration claiming that it wants to restore American power in order, among other things, to negotiate from a position of strength, the past week has not advanced the cause.
On the World Class podcast, James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul discuss how relations are evolving between the United States and Europe, and what that means for the future of Ukraine, defense strategy in Europe, and global security interests.
FSI scholars Michael McFaul, Steven Pifer, and Rose Gottemoeller analyze the Alaska meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and its implications for Ukraine’s security and sovereignty.
Denis Morozov is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law for the 2025-2026 academic year. His research focuses on the role and position of multilateral development banks in the evolving global financial system and their impact on international development.
Before joining Stanford in 2023 as a Fellow at the Distinguished Careers Institute, Denis served as President of Bank of America for Russia and the CIS, overseeing the franchise’s regional work in investment advisory, capital markets, research, and securities trading.
Prior to his role at Bank of America, Denis was the Executive Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a leading international financial institution aimed at fostering the transition towards market-oriented economies and multiparty democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and parts of Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Earlier in his career, Denis was the President and Chief Executive Officer of Norilsk Nickel and Uralkali, two global leaders in their respective commodities (base and platinum group metals and fertilizer inputs), both of which were recognized for their superior financial performance and high standards of corporate governance under Denis’ leadership.
Denis obtained a BA in Economics and a JD from Moscow State University. He later received an MA in Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Additionally, he completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School, received a diploma in Commercial Banking from the Swiss Banking School, and earned a PhD (Russian equivalent) in Economics from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
In 2012, Denis was named a Young Global Leader by the Davos World Economic Forum.
Denis is passionate about travel and exploration and enjoys long-distance running, water sports, and anything to do with mountains.
Please join us in congratulating Anna Grzymala-Busse, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and the Director of the Europe Center, winner of the American Political Science Review's 2025 Heinz I. Eulau Award. The award honors the best articles published during the previous calendar year in American Political Science Review (APSA) and Perspectives on Politics. Dr. Eulau served as the president of APSA from 1971 to 1972, and this award was established to honor his contributions to the discipline.
In her award-winning article, “Tilly Goes to Church: The Religious and Medieval Roots of European State Fragmentation,” Professor Grzymala-Busse challenges traditional views of how European states formed, demonstrating how the medieval Catholic Church deliberately maintained divided political power to protect its influence.
The Award Committee shared the following on her article and selection:
Anna Grzymala-Busse’s “Tilly Goes to Church: The Religious and Medieval Roots of European State Fragmentation” challenges paradigmatic understandings of state development, according to which centralizing European states overcame fragmentation in the early modern era by consolidating strong states through warfare. Critics of this bellicist account have noted several empirical challenges: namely, the fragmentation of Europe was in fact highly persistent; concomitant institutions such as taxation and courts, which were supposedly consequents of mobilization for conflict, arose prior to warfare; and war did not lead uniformly to state consolidation.
In this paper, Gzrymala-Busse proposes a new explanation for these discordant patterns. She focuses on a critical but often ignored actor: the Catholic Church. Fragmentation, she argues, was a direct and intended consequence of concerted papal effort, especially starting in the 11th century, to weaken the authority of those rulers the Church saw as a threat to its autonomy. Thus, where states became relatively consolidated, including medieval England, France, and Spain, this was due to alliances between secular rulers and popes; while fragmentation was a function of Church-secular conflict, as in especially the Holy Roman Empire. Where states consolidated, institutions such as courts, parliaments and administrations arose often in mimicry of the Church, and appeared substantially earlier than required by early modern warfare.
The paper leverages rich argumentation and information drawn from a wealth of secondary sources, as well as original data on state boundaries, the timing of institutional innovations, the presences of proxy wars funded by popes, and indicators of secular conflict to test the association between papal conflict and fragmentation. It adds up to a compelling account, underscoring not only of the drawbacks for the paradigmatic understanding of European state development but also providing a novel and convincing empirical explanation for patterns of state consolidation and fragmentation.
"Tilly Goes to Church" was also awarded the Best Article Prize by the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association in June 2024. You can read the full article here.
Congratulations, Professor Grzymala-Busse, on this high honor!
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Q&As
Will Pope Leo XIV Shift Global Politics? Q&A with Professor Anna Grzymała-Busse
Prof. Grzymała-Busse, a leading scholar on religion and politics, unpacks what Pope Leo XIV’s election could mean for diplomacy, populism, and the Church’s global role.
Diversity and Democracy: Navigating the Complexities of the 2024 Election
The third of four panels of the “America Votes 2024” series examined the tension surrounding diversity and inclusion in the upcoming election. The panel featured Stanford scholars Hakeem Jefferson, Didi Kuo, Jonathan Rodden, and Anna Grzymala-Busse.
CDDRL Scholars Celebrated for Exceptional Contributions to Political Science Literature
Anna Grzymala-Busse's book "Sacred Foundations" has been awarded the American Political Science Association's J. David Greenstone Award and the Hubert Morken Best Book in Religion and Politics Award. Erin Baggott Carter and Brett Carter's book "Propaganda in Autocracies" has won the Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award from the International Journal of Press/Politics.
Major: Economics & Political Science Minor: Mathematics Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts & Oxford, UK Thesis Advisor: Larry Diamond & Javier Mejia
Tentative Thesis Title:Toward a Theory of the Evolution of the Global Political Economy: Varieties of Democracy, Development and Law
Future aspirations post-Stanford: I would like to undertake a joint JD/PhD in political economy and to work in the academy, public, and private sectors.
A fun fact about yourself: I was the youngest person in UK history to litigate on behalf of the disabled in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Employment Tribunal, where I cross-examined a dozen senior leaders of a $500 million organization in a 40-day trial for an ongoing four-year, multi-million dollar lawsuit, in which I have been acting on a pro bono basis.
Virtual participation available via Zoom using the link above. Zoom Meeting ID: 997 4878 4037, Passcode: 998456
We invite our virtual participants to join in celebrating Marcel Fafchamps' distinguished career. Following the keynote address, at 10:00 AM PST, there will be an opportunity for online attendees to offer brief remarks or words of appreciation to honor Professor Fafchamps and his many contributions to scholarship, mentorship, and our academic community. Your reflections are a valued part of this special occasion.
Join us for a full-day academic symposium celebrating the career and contributions of economist Marcel Fafchamps, Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, on the occasion of his retirement. Featuring a keynote by Marcel himself, this tribute brings together colleagues, collaborators, and students to engage with the themes and ideas that have shaped his influential work in development economics, labor markets, and social networks.
The day will feature in-depth paper presentations, rapid-fire research talks, and engaging discussions with scholars, including Stefano Caria (University of Warwick), Pascaline Dupas (Princeton University), and Simon Quinn (Imperial College London), with more speakers to be announced soon. Topics span management practices, persuasion and diffusion, strategic reasoning, and mutual aid—from field experiments to economic theory.
Come celebrate the distinguished research career of Marcel Fafchamps with us.
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
The symposium will be held in person, by invitation only. Professor Fafchamps' keynote will be livestreamed via Zoom.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the King Center on Global Development.
8:30 AM — Continental Breakfast available in 2nd Floor Lobby, Encina Hall Central
8:45 AM — General Welcome, Kathryn Stoner
9:00 AM — Keynote Address, Marcel Fafchamps: Behavioral Markets
10:00 AM— Virtual Attendees may join to share brief remarks and words of appreciation
10:15 AM — Morning Break
10:45 AM — Session Speaker: Stefano Caria,Competition and Management
11:45 AM — Rapid Fire Speaker: Tom Schwantje, Management Style Under the Spotlight: Evidence from Studio Recordings
12:15 PM — Lunch Break
1:15 PM — Session Speaker Pascaline Dupas: Keeping Up Appearances: Socioeconomic Status Signaling to Avoid Discrimination
2:15 PM — Rapid Fire Speaker: Deivy Houeix,Eliciting Poverty Rankings from Urban or Rural Neighbors
2:45 PM — Afternoon Break
3:00 PM — Session Speaker: Simon Quinn,Matching, Management and Employment Outcomes: A Field Experiment with Firm Internships
Marcel Fafchamps is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a professor of economics. His research focuses on development economics, particularly how institutions, social networks, and market failures impact economic outcomes in low-income countries. He has published extensively on topics like agriculture, labor markets, and entrepreneurship, and has held academic positions at Oxford and Stanford. Fafchamps is known for combining rigorous empirical analysis with an understanding of real-world development challenges.
Stefano Caria is a Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, affiliated with J‑PAL, CEPR, CAGE, and the IGC, serving as lead academic for Ethiopia. He earned his DPhil (and MPhil) in Economics from the University of Oxford and previously held positions at Oxford’s Department of International Development and the University of Bristol. He combines experimental and structural methods to study labor market frictions, refugee employment, childcare support, and firm-worker matching in low-income settings across Africa and the Middle East.
Tom Schwantje is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Bocconi University, where he is affiliated with IGIER and FINAFRICA. In his research, he focuses on the organizational economics and management of firms and banks in low-income countries. He is particularly interested in how managers operate in these settings, and how this is shaped by their environment. Most recently, he has started working on an exciting new research agenda on the organizational economics of banking in Ethiopia. Tom received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oxford University.
Deivy Houeix is a Prize Fellow at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University. His primary field is Development Economics, with secondary interests in Organizational Economics. His research focuses on technology's role in lower-income countries, particularly in West Africa. Houeix explores how digital technologies reshape economic relationships and contract structures within and between firms, uncovering some key drivers and barriers to their adoption. Houeix is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has conducted research projects in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Togo. In 2027, Houeix will join Columbia Business School as an Assistant Professor of Economics.
Pascaline Dupas is Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She joined the Princeton faculty in July 2023. She was previously the Kleinheinz Family Professor of International Studies at Stanford University, where she spent 12 years on the faculty. She has also held faculty positions at Dartmouth College and UCLA. Dupas is a development economist studying the challenges facing poor households in lower-income countries and their root causes. Her goal is to identify interventions and policies that can help overcome these challenges and reduce global poverty. She conducts extensive fieldwork. Her ongoing research includes studies of education policy in Ghana, family planning policy in Burkina Faso, and government-subsidized health insurance in India, among others.
Simon Quinnis an Associate Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School and Academic Director of its MSc in Economics & Strategy for Business. His research lies at the intersection of development and labor economics, with a focus on firms, markets, and institutions in low-income countries, especially in Africa. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned his MPhil and DPhil in Economics from Oxford, where he was also an Examination Fellow at All Souls College. Simon’s work includes field experiments on credit, management, and labor markets.
Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.
Katherine Casey is a professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Faculty Director of the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the interactions between economic and political forces in developing countries, with particular interest in the role of information in enhancing political accountability and the influence of foreign aid on economic development. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. She teaches a course in the MBA program focused on firm strategy vis a vis government in emerging markets.
Melanie Morton, Faculty Affiliate, King Center on Global Development, is a development economist and associate professor in the department of economics at Stanford University. She is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the National Bureau for Economic Research. Dr. Morten is interested in how households respond to risk in developing countries, including using short term and temporary migration. Her work has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of Police Economy and the World Bank Economic Review. She received her PhD from Yale and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
The symposium will be held in the William J. Perry Conference Room, 2nd Floor, Encina Hall.
Event Location:
William J. Perry Conference Room Encina Hall, 2nd Floor, C-231 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Visitor Parking
There is no free parking on campus. Visitor and hourly parking permits are required through the ParkMobile app. Please download the app ahead of your visit and follow directions. Pay-by-space parking is available throughout campus; availability is limited. Please note that parking is monitored Monday - Friday, 8 am - 4 pm.
The parking areas closest to Encina Hall are located on surrounding streets and in the following parking garages:
Knight Management Center Parking Garage
Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305
Manzanita Field Garage
742 Campus Drive, Stanford, CA 94305
For parking information, contact the Parking and Transportation Department's Visitor Parking page.
Rideshare Drop-off / Pick-up Address
The closest drop-off location is: Gunn Building, 366 Galvez St., Stanford, CA 94305
From Galvez, walk South towards the Hoover Tower, and turn left at the intersection, onto Jane Stanford Way. Encina Hall is the large four-story building on your right. Enter through the main door, at the top of the stairs, and head up to the 2nd floor. An accessible entrance and ramp are located on the right side of Encina Hall, at the West Entrance.
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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fafchamp@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Economics
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Marcel Fafchamps is a Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Previously, he was the Satre Family Senior Fellow at FSI. Fafchamps is a professor (by courtesy) for the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His research interests include economic development, market institutions, social networks, and behavioral economics — with a special focus on Africa and South Asia.
Prior to joining FSI, from 1999-2013, Fafchamps served as professor of development economics in the Department of Economics at Oxford University. He also served as deputy director and then co-director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. From 1989 to 1996, Fafchamps was an assistant professor with the Food Research Institute at Stanford University. Following the closure of the Institute, he taught for two years at the Department of Economics. For the 1998-1999 academic year, Fafchamps was on sabbatical leave at the research department of the World Bank. Before pursuing his PhD in 1986, Fafchamps was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for 5 years during his employment with the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency that oversees employment, income distribution, and vocational training in Africa.
He has authored two books: Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence (MIT Press, 2004) and Rural Poverty, Risk, and Development (Elgar Press, 2003), and has published numerous articles in academic journals.
Fafchamps served as the editor-in-chief of Economic Development and Cultural Change until 2020. Previously, he had served as chief editor of the Journal of African Economies from 2000 to 2013, and as associate editor of the Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and the Revue d'Economie du Développement.
He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an affiliated professor with J-PAL, a senior fellow with the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a research fellow with IZA, Germany, and with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, UK, and an affiliate with the University of California’s Center for Effective Global Action.
Fafchamps has degrees in Law and in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain. He holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
In September 2022, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan identified quantum technologies as one of three — biotech, clean energy (including batteries), and next-generation computing (including quantum and semiconductors)—that are critical to the economic and national security of the United States.1 By allowing for new methods of computation, sensing, and communications, quantum technologies have the potential to revolutionize not only commercial industries, such as financial services, chemical engineering, and energy (among others), but also national security capabilities, such as code breaking and remote sensing.
