Keynote & Panels - CSAE Conference 2026

BIOGRAPHY FOR PROF. NYARKO
Yaw Nyarko is Professor of Economics at New York University (NYU) and the Director of NYU Africa House and the Center for Technology, Economics, and Development (CTED), as well as Co-Director of the Development Research Institute (DRI). As Co-Director of DRI, he was awarded the 2009 BBVA Frontiers in Knowledge Award on Economic Development Cooperation. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

His research interests focus on the areas of economic development, theoretical economics, models of human capital as engines of economic growth, brain drain and skills acquisition, labor economics, and migration. His current research focuses on technology and economic development, commodities exchanges and markets in Africa, and determinants and returns of labor migration from South Asia in the UAE, as well as the impacts of various policy measures on the mobility of labor within the UAE.

He is the Chair of the Econometric Society Africa Regional Standing Committee. He has served as a consultant to organizations including the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Social Science Research Council. As the former Vice Provost of NYU, he managed a portfolio that included the oversight and establishment of campuses in Abu Dhabi, Accra, and Shanghai. Yaw Nyarko received his B.A. from the University of Ghana and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University.

https://yawnyarko.com

The afternoon of Sunday 22 March will open with a screening of the film Made in Ethiopia (2024) by Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan.

Filmed over four years with singular access, Made in Ethiopia lifts the curtain on China’s historic but misunderstood impact on Africa, and explores contemporary Ethiopia at a moment of profound crisis. The film throws audiences into two colliding worlds: an industrial juggernaut fueled by profit and progress, and a vanishing countryside where life is still measured by the cycle of the seasons. And its nuance, complexity and multi-perspective approach go beyond black and white narratives of victims and villains. As the three women’s stories unfold, Made in Ethiopia challenges us to rethink the relationship between tradition and modernity, growth and welfare, the development of a country and the well-being of its people.

BIOGRAPHY FOR STEFANO CARIA
Stefano is the Academic Director of the CSAE, Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Jesus College.

He is also lead academic for the International Growth Centre Ethiopia, and firms program co-director. He is co-chair of the labour sector at J-PAL, and associate editor of Econometrica.

Stefano’s other affiliations include BREAD, CEPR (development and labour), CAGE and the EEE program at STICERD. He is currently a recipient of a Leverhulme Prize.

BIOGRAPHY FOR MAX DUNCAN

Max Duncan is an award-winning filmmaker, cinematographer and journalist whose work has appeared on platforms including the BBC, PBS, The Guardian, The New York Times and Al Jazeera. He worked for a decade in China, first as a video journalist for Reuters news agency in Beijing and then independently, exploring the country’s meteoric rise from many angles. He now works widely across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Max has won a World Press Photo Award, been supported by organisations including Pulitzer, and is an alumnus of Yaddo and Logan Nonfiction programs. Made in Ethiopia, his feature documentary debut, has appeared at over 50 international film festivals and won recognition including the Jury Special Mention at Tribeca Festival, where it premiered.

BIOGRAPHY FOR STEFAN DERCON
Stefan Dercon is Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, a Professorial Fellow of Jesus College, and the Academic Director of the Economic Policy Network. He is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Department of Economics and has worked extensively as a policy advisor, providing strategic economic and development advice, and promoting the use of evidence in decision making, including as Chief Economist of the UK Department of International Development 2011-2017.

Stefan's research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to achieve change.

His latest book, Gambling on Development: Why some countries win and others lose was published in May 2022. It draws on his academic research as well as his policy experience across three decades and 40-odd countries, exploring why some countries have managed to settle on elite bargains favouring growth and development, and others did not. Previously, Dull Disasters? How Planning Ahead Will Make A Difference was published in 2016, and provides a blueprint for renewed application of science, improved decision making, better preparedness, and pre-arranged finance in the face of natural disasters.

Stefan is a Fellow of BREAD, a Research Fellow of CEPR and of IZA, an Affiliate of J-PAL, a Non-resident Fellow, Centre for Global Development, Washington and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacture (FRSA). He studied economics and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and holds an MPhil and DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. Before re-joining the University of Oxford, he held positions at the University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the Catholic University of Leuven, and WIDER (Helsinki), part of the United Nations University.

In 2018, the Queen awarded him as an honorary Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for services to economics and international development. In 2025, Stefan was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the social sciences.

BIOGRAPHY FOR JAMES HABYARIMANA
James Habyarimana is a Distinguished Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy. His research is focused on identifying low-cost strategies to address barriers to better health and education outcomes in developing countries. Ongoing projects include research to understand the effectiveness of centralized and decentralized programs, including the role of leadership and teacher training on learning outcomes, as well as how electoral incentives shape the design and implementation of education and health policies in East Africa. He is a founding member and former co-Director of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Innovation, Development and Evaluation (gui2de). He is a fellow at BREAD, an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and sits on the research advisory council for GiveWell. He serves on the boards of the Global Innovation Fund and Building Tomorrow.

BIOGRAPHY FOR DEAN KARLAN
Dean Karlan is the Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University, co-director of the Global Poverty Research Lab, and former Chief Economist of USAID (2022-2025). His research focuses on development and behavioral economics, typically using experimental methods to examine questions about poverty and behavior change.

Karlan founded Innovations for Poverty Action, a research and policy nonprofit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty; co-founded stickK.com, a website to help individuals write commitment contracts to engage in positive behavior change; and co-founded ImpactMatters, a nonprofit dedicated to providing impact ratings of nonprofits to retail donors. Karlan was also on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab from inception until 2022. From 2005-2017 he was a professor of economics at Yale University, and from 2002-2005 he was a professor of economics at Princeton University.

He has co-authored four books: More Than Good Intentions; Failing in the Field; The Goldilocks Challenge, and Economics, a principles textbook. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia.interviews with the New York Times, NPR, The Economist, Vox and more.

BIOGRAPHY FOR NOMPUMELELO NYATHI-MOHOHLWANE
Dr Nompumelelo Nyathi-Mohohlwane is an education researcher working at the National Department of Basic Education in South Africa as the Director for Reading. Her work includes system monitoring and conducting research and evaluation of education interventions. She is part of the research team for the government-led Early Grade Reading Study randomised control trials (2015-2018, 2018-2021, 2021-2024). She has also led the development of early grade reading benchmarks for 11 South African languages. She has a Doctorate in Education Policy from Stellenbosch University. She is a non-resident fellow with the Centre for Global Development and a research fellow with the University of Stellenbosch. She is part of the Academic Lead Team for the What Works Hub in Education.

You can find one of her latest publications here: Mohohlwane, N., Taylor, S., Cilliers, J., & Fleisch, B. (2023). Reading Skills Transfer Best from Home Language to a Second Language: Policy Lessons from Two Field Experiments in South Africa. Centre for Global Development Working Paper.

BIOGRAPHY FOR NOAM ANGRIST
Noam Angrist is the Academic Director of the What Works Hub for Global Education. His interests focus on bridging the gap between evidence on 'what works' to enable young people to thrive and translation into scaled intervention and policy.

Noam has published in leading academic journals including Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. In addition, he has published across disciplines, including education, economics, public health, and the natural sciences. His research includes primary research on programme and policy effectiveness via randomised trials and natural experiments, building global databases and public goods, and synthesising evidence to inform policy.

He has consulted for the World Bank Chief Economist, FCDO's Chief Economist, and led key aspects of the development of the World Bank Human Capital Index education pillar. This includes the development of Harmonised Learning Outcomes and a new global measure of education, Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling, which has been adopted as an indicator by the World Bank, FCDO and USAID to track education systems at the country level.

Noam led the development of UNICEF's evidence menu for the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Hub (FLN) hub in partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). He also led the academic research underpinning the inaugural report of the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, which reviewed over 150 impact evaluations in education and provided timely recommendations on cost-effective 'smart buys' to improve learning outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.

He is the co-founder of Youth Impact, one of the largest NGOs dedicated to scaling-up health and education programmes backed by rigorous randomised trial evidence. Headquartered in Botswana, the organisation has scaled evidence-based programmes to over 100,000 youth across ten countries.