Chris Barrett

Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management and International Professor of Agriculture at Cornell University, where he also serves as the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future’s Associate Director for Economic Development Programs and the Director of the Cornell Institute for International Food, Agriculture and Development’s initiative on Stimulating Agricultural and Rural Transformation.

He holds degrees from Princeton (A.B. 1984), Oxford (M.S. 1985) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (dual Ph.D. 1994), and worked as a staff economist with the Institute for International Finance in Washington, DC in the latter half of the 1980s. At Cornell, he teaches an undergraduate course on Contemporary Controversies in the Global Economy and graduate courses on the Microeconomics of International Development.

There are three basic, interrelated thrusts to Prof. Barrett’s research program. The first concerns poverty, hunger, food security, economic policy and the structural transformation of low-income societies. The second considers issues of individual and market behavior under risk and uncertainty. The third revolves around the interrelationship between poverty, food security and environmental stress in developing countries. Professor Barrett has published or in press 10 books and more than 200 journal articles and book chapters. He has been principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on more than $21 million in extramural research grants from the National Science Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and other sponsors. He has supervised more than 50 graduate students and post-docs, many of whom are now on leading faculties and in research institutes worldwide. He served as editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics from 2003-2008, is presently as an associate editor or editorial board member of the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, the Egerton (Kenya) Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, the Journal of African Economies, the Journal of Development Studies and World Development, and was previously President of the Association of Christian Economists. He has served on a variety of boards and has won several university, national and international awards for teaching, research and public outreach.

He lives with his wife, Clara, and their five children in Lansing, NY.