The department is a lively community that is recognised internationally as one of the top centres for research and teaching in development studies.

Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Doug Gollin’s research focusses on economic development and growth, with particular interests in agriculture and structural transformation. His work brings a general equilibrium perspective to issues such as: sectoral differences in productivity; the impacts of agricultural technologies; the role of transport costs in shaping spatial patterns of development; the importance of small firms and self employment in poor countries; and the macroeconomic effects of disease.
Doug Gollin joined Oxford in October 2012 after spending 16 years on the faculty of Williams College in the United States. From 2012-17, he chaired the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment of the CGIAR, a consortium of international agricultural research organisations. He also works with the International Growth Centre and a number of international organizations and NGOs involved in policy-oriented research on development.
He is currently a Managing Editor of the Journal of African Economies. Since 2015, he has been a Research Fellow with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), in both the Development Economics Programme and the Macroeconomics and Growth Programme; he is also a Fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).
Doug Gollin holds an AB degree from Harvard University and an MA from Yale University. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1996.
Doug Gollin teaches on the MSc in Economics for Development and the MPhil in Development Studies.
Doug supervises broadly on areas related to agricultural development, structural transformation, and economic growth. His supervisees use a range of quantitative methods and mixed methods; he is especially interested in work that uses micro data to address macro questions. He welcomes applications from prospective students whose work is firmly grounded in macro/growth economics, contemporary development economics, or development studies. He looks for proposals that show careful thought about concepts and measurement (as opposed to those that use data without close examination of the underlying and embedded assumptions).
He does not generally supervise doctoral research involving large-scale global models, country development strategies, fiscal/monetary policy, cross-country regression analyses, or local case studies.
Agriculture; economic growth; structural transformation; transportation costs; agricultural technology; agricultural research; technological change.