Christopher Udry

Christopher Udry is the Henry J. Heinz, II Professor of Economics at Yale University. He is a development economist whose research focuses on rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has conducted extensive field research in West Africa on technological change in agriculture, the use of financial markets, asset accumulation and gift exchange to cope with risk, gender relations and the structure of household economies, property rights and a variety of other aspects of rural economic organization. Current research includes directing the first long-term, nationwide socioeconomic panel survey of individuals across Ghana (in collaboration with the University of Ghana); randomized evaluations of a variety of governmental and NGO-led development programs in West Africa; work on risk, information flows and agriculture in Mali, Ghana and India; and the role of psychological well-being on economic decision-making.

Udry spent two years as a secondary school teacher in northern Ghana, and has been a visiting scholar at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and at the University of Ghana at Legon. At Yale, Udry has directed the Economic Growth Center, chaired the Council on African Studies and served as the Chair of the Department of Economics.  He teaches graduate courses on development economics, and undergraduate courses on Economic Development and Introduction to Microeconomics. Udry is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.