Stefan Dercon is Professor of Development Economics at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Fellow of Wolfson College. Previously he taught in Belgium and at the University of Addis Ababa. His interest is in applying microeconomics and statistics to problems of development. He has worked on risk and poverty, agriculture and rural institutions, political economy, childhood poverty, social and geographic mobility, micro-insurance, and measurement issues related to poverty and vulnerability. Stefan Dercon is presently on leave from the University of Oxford and is the Chief Economist at the Department for International Development (DFID), the UK bilateral aid agency.