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- 35 years old
- MS in Agricultural Engineering, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
- PhD, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley, USA.
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Karen Macours
agriculture at the service of development
(07/09/2010)
Karen Macours is joining the Paris-Jourdan Economic Sciences Joint Research Unit (PSE) at the Paris School of Economics. She will be working on a vast project on the evaluation of the constraints of poor rural families in developing countries in adopting technological innovations. Karen Macours is an experienced international economist and is hosted by INRA as part of its 2009 Scientific Package programme.
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Combining agronomy and economics to acquire international expertise in development aid
Karen Macours is Associate Professor of International Economics at John Hopkins University (Washington DC, USA). Her interest in development economics goes back a long way: “From a very young age I wanted to work in development aid. The majority of poor people in the world live in rural areas. Their economic activity? Agriculture. Therefore, this is one of the areas where we have to start work on reducing poverty”.
After a Masters in Agricultural Engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven, Karen Macours left Belgium to join the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department of the University of California at Berkeley. The dynamism of the American economics community offered her the opening she was looking for in the economics of development.
Her PhD dissertation on the problems of access to land in Latin America sealed her interest for that part of the globe, in particular for Nicaragua: “I love Nicaragua. There is a “social conscience” at all levels of society. I have met many highly motivated people, convinced that what they are doing is useful,” explains Karen Macours, with great energy which reflects the passion which motivates her.
“After Haiti, Nicaragua is the poorest country in Latin America”. The problems which confront poor rural populations are the very essence of her research: impact of social programmes, agrarian reforms, access to land, to property, social conflicts and inequality. Her research has been published in top journals: American Journal of Agricultural Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of Comparative Economics, etc.
Today her work extends from Latin American countries to countries in transition (south-east Europe and ex-Soviet Union countries), to India, Nepal and China through research projects supported by the World Bank and other international development aid agencies. This international dimension led Karen Macours to be a core team member of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2008 and Agriculture for Development 2006-2007.
Agriculture: an instrument to aid development and reduce inequalities
Over the last few years, Karen Macours has worked principally on assessing the impact of social programmes in the poor rural areas of Latin America. Her solid knowledge of Nicaragua will be the foundation for the project that she is proposing to develop at PSE: analysing the micro-economic brakes on adopting agricultural innovations for poor rural families. “For me, PSE is one of the best places in Europe to start research on countries in French-speaking Africa on which I haven’t worked but which interest me. With researchers who have a lot of experience.” The project will be based on the joint exploitation of databases of long-term micro-economic surveys already conducted by Karen Macours and PSE. To help her in this task, the Scientific Package programme makes provision for the recruitment of a postdoctoral fellow and a PhD student.
Karen Macours’ research in micro-economics sets out to assess the impact of programmes in favour of poor rural populations. “We see whether poor rural populations, by adopting a new farming technique for example, have succeeded in improving their productivity, increasing their income. Or, on the contrary, why existing technologies (new seeds, fertilisers…) have not been adopted.” These data help to understand the factors which affect the decisions made by producers. Karen Macours’ objective is that decision-makers can translate the results directly into guidelines and political measures.
No economic growth without improving human capital
However, Karen Macours’ research is not focused solely on production potential or economic activity but on the different aspects of human capital: education, vocational training, health and social protection. “Compared with the populations of the United States, Europe and even Mexico, poor children of school age in rural areas in Nicaragua are already more than two years behind. This can be seen especially in problems of language acquisition and cognitive development. From a very young age, they have enormous handicaps which will have an effect on the decisions that they will have to make later in their economic activities. You need to provide more than schools and teachers for children in poor environments to be able to learn."
Hence the idea of Karen Macours to assess the impact of conditional cash transfer programmes on cognitive and socio-emotional development during early childhood (0-6 years). Poor families receive an income on condition that they respect a certain number of requirements concerning nutrition, medical care, etc. The results of this research show the positive impact of these conditional cash transfer programmes on changes in parents’ behaviour for the benefit of young children, with potential gains later during their schooling.
“I proposed to PSE that we combine agricultural data with human capital dimensions, as I want to do for Nicaragua. »
After 12 years in the USA, Karen Macours is also delighted with the opportunity provided by INRA’s Scientific Package programme to be once again a part of the European political and economic community. But one of the things she will miss, she admits, “is the New York Times on Sunday mornings with my coffee!”
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Written by :
Communications Department
Date of creation : 15/11/2010
Date of last update : 16/11/2010
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