Research interests
Economic development; enterprises and development; private sector growth
Christopher Woodruff
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
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Journal articles and special issues( ) Information and Bargaining through Agents: Experimental Evidence from Mexico’s Labour Courts . The Review of Economic Studies( ) Can Mobile-Linked Bank Accounts Bolster Savings? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Sri Lanka . The Review of Economics and Statistics 104 (2) 306–20( ) Gender wage gaps and worker mobility: Evidence from the garment sector in Bangladesh . Labour Economics 71 102000( ) Can Mobile-Linked Bank Accounts Bolster Savings? Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Sri Lanka . Review of Economics and Statistics( ) “What Are the Headwaters of Formal Savings? Experimental Evidence from Sri Lanka . Review of Economic Studies 86 2491-2529( ) Experiments and Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries . Annual Review of Economics 11 225-248( ) Labor Drops: Experimental Evidence on the Return to Additional Labor in Microenterprises . American Economic Journal: Applied Economcs 11 (1) 202-35( ) Identifying Gazelles: Expert Panels Vs. Surveys as a Means to Identify Firms with Rapid Growth Potential . World Bank Economic Review 31(3) 670–86( ) Business Practices in Small Firms in Developing Countries . Management Science 63 (9) 2967-81( ) Business Training and Female Enterprise Start-up, Growth, and Dynamics: Experimental evidence from Sri Lanka Journal of Development Economics 106 199-210( ) What are we learning from business training and entrepreneurship evaluations around the developing world? World Bank Research Observer 29 (1) 48-82( ) Microenterprise Growth and the Flypaper Effect: Evidence from a randomized experiment in Ghana Journal of Development Economics 106 211-26( ) Deposit Collecting: Unbundling the Role of Frequency, Salience and Habit Formation in Generating Savings AEA Papers and Proceedings 103 (3) 387-92( ) The demand for, and consequences of, formalization among informal firms in Sri Lanka AEJ: Applied Economics 5 (2) 122-50( ) Enterprise Recovery following Natural Disasters Economic Journal 122 (559) 64-91( ) One-time transfers of cash or capital have long-lasting effects on microenterprises in Sri Lanka Science 335 (6071) 962-6( ) Getting Credit to High-Return Microenterprises: The Results of an Information Intervention . World Bank Economic Review 25 (3) 456-85( ) Remittances and Banking Services: Evidence from Mexico Journal of Development Economics 95 (2) 229-41( ) Mexican-American Entrepreneurship . BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 10 (1) (Contributions) Article 10( ) Wage Subsidies for Microenterprises . American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 100 (2) 614-18( ) Are Women more Credit Constrained? Experimental Evidence on Gender and Microenterprise Returns AEJ-Applied Economics 1 (3) 1-32( ) Measuring Microenterprise Profits: Must we ask how the sausage is made? Journal of Development Economics 88 (1) 19-31
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Chapters( ) The importance of protecting export-oriented firms . In Simeon Djankov, Ugo Panizza COVID-19 in Developing Economies , CEPR Press
