David Stifel

Special interests: development economics; applied micro-econometrics; poverty and infrastructure; agricultural production and markets

David Stifel joined the Economics faculty in the fall of 2003. He teaches Economic Development, Econometrics, Applied Microeconometrics, and a capstone course on Big Ideas in Economics. He has led interim courses to Thailand and Myanmar, and currently supervises the Lafayette Initiative for Malagasy Education (LIME), a student-run program that works with high school students in Madagascar.

Professor Stifel is a development economist with research interests in poverty, agricultural markets and rural infrastructure. He has lived in Madagascar (2006/7) where we worked with the World Bank, in Ethiopia (2011/12) where he was visiting research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and in Sri Lanka (2019/20) where he was a sabbatical research fellow with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). His work has been published in such journals as World Development, Global Environmental Change, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Economics and Human Biology, and Food Policy.

Fun fact: Each member of Prof. Stifel’s family was born in a different country — Prof. Stifel (Thailand), wife (Canada), son (USA), and daughter (South Africa).

​​Courses Taught
Economics 327: Applied Microeconometrics
Economics 346: Economic Development
Economics 404: Big Ideas in Economics