Jean-Paul Azam is professor of economics at the University of Toulouse (France) and at the Institut Universitaire de France. He is also the director of ARQADE (Atelier de recherche quantitative appliquée au développement économique) and a research fellow at IDEI (Institut d’économie industrielle) both in Toulouse, and a fellow of EUDN (European Development Network). He has held visiting positions at Abidjan, Louvain-la-Neuve, Namur, Ouagadougou, Oxford (at St Antony’s College), etc. A French national born in Oujda (Morocco) in 1951, he was trained in Toulouse and at LSE (London School of Economics), where he got his Ph.D. in Economics in 1980.

He is an applied theorist with an extensive field experience in Africa and Asia. He has served as a consultant for many institutions, including the World Bank and the EU, and is a Resource-Person at the Nairobi-based AERC (African Economic Research Consortium). His research interests span a wide array of topics related to economic and political development in poor countries, including among the topics analyzed at IZA: migration, ethnic discrimination, trade unions, wage determination, etc. He has also worked on conflicts, including civil war and terrorism, and the role of redistribution and aid in their prevention. He has published papers in Economics or Political Science journals such as European Economic Review, Journal of African Economies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Peace Research, Public Choice, World Development, etc. His recent book Trade, Exchange Rate and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2007) emphasizes how African institutions, either formal or informal, change decisively the effects of macroeconomic and trade policies and their impact on poverty.

He was an IZA Fellow from April 2007 until Dezember 2015.