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Christopher Woodruff

Research interests

Economic development; enterprises and development; private sector growth

Christopher Woodruff

Professor of Development Economics

Christopher Woodruff is Professor of Development Economics and a Fellow at Wolfson College.

He is the Scientific Coordinator for the DFID – CEPR joint research venture on Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries (PEDL) and directs the Firm Capabilities group at the International Growth Centre. In addition to his position at Oxford, Professor Woodruff is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and a Senior Fellow of the Bureau of Research on Economic Analysis and Development (BREAD), a Research Fellow at the Center for Competitive Advantage and the Global Economy (CAGE) and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). 

His research focuses on enterprises in low-income countries, with noted work on returns to capital investments in microenterprises and the effect of formal registration on enterprise performance. He is a pioneer in the use of field experiments in firms. He currently holds an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council for work measuring productivity in the readymade garment sector, with a particular focus on the challenges women face in moving into supervisory positions in the Bangladeshi garment sector.

Professor Woodruff teaches the Development and the Private Sector module for the MSc in Economics for Development.

Research students supervised

  • Chapters

    Woodruff, Christopher
    ( ) The importance of protecting export-oriented firms . In Simeon Djankov, Ugo Panizza COVID-19 in Developing Economies , CEPR Press
Overview
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