Sahn, David Ezra

Professor

Positions

David E. Sahn is an International Professor of Economics in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and the Department of Economics. Since 2011, he has also been a visiting professor at Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International (CERDI), l’Université d’Auvergne, France. He has a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Masters of Public Health from the University of Michigan. His main academic interest is in identifying the solutions to poverty, malnutrition, and disease in developing countries, as well as the determinants of human capital and the role of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in labor market outcomes. In addition to teaching and mentoring of graduate students, he devotes considerable efforts to training and capacity building of research institutions in Africa and working with government officials and international organizations to integrate research findings into policy. Before coming to Cornell in 1988, Professor Sahn was an Economist at the World Bank, and prior to that, a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. He has been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund, a visiting Distinguished Professor at l'Université d'Auvergne, visiting researcher at both the Département et Laboratoire d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, École Normale Superieure (DELTA) and Laboratoire d'Économie Appliquée de Paris, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Paris, and a visiting professor at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. He has also worked extensively with numerous international organizations, such as the Hewlett Foundation, the African Development Bank, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and several UN agencies such as UNICEF, the UN Development Program, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the United Nations University, and the World Health Organization. He has also worked as a consultant for various governments in Asia, Africa and transition economies in Eastern Europe.

Dr. Sahn has a long list, numbering over 120 of peer-reviewed books, chapters, and journal articles dealing with issues of poverty, inequality, education, health, nutrition, and related economic and social policy. This body of literature includes both research focused on the impact of economic policy on household welfare, such as his widely cited books on the impact of economic reforms in Africa, Structural Adjustment Reconsidered (Cambridge University Press) and Economic Reform and the Poor in Africa (Oxford University Press), as well as numerous publications that focus on the production of human capital outcomes, particularly in the areas of health, nutrition and education, as well as issues related to labor markets and gender issues. He also has an interest in economic history and has published articles on changes in nutrition and health status in 19th-century France; he is presently working with collaborators in Switzerland and Germany on the historical evolution of nutrition in Switzerland. In 2010, Dr. Sahn edited an important volume, The Socioeconomic Dimensions of HIV/AIDS in Africa, bringing together leading scholars to examine this great disease threat. Recent publications include “Health Inequality across Populations of Individuals,” forthcoming in African Development Review; “Nutrition, Health and Economic Performance,” forthcoming in the Encyclopedia of Health Economics (2014, Oxford: Elsevier); “Health Challenges in Africa” and “Impact of Health on Economic Outcomes,” both included in The Oxford Companion to the Economics of Africa (2012). Other recent publications include:"Household Water Supply Choice and Time Allocated to Water Collection: Evidence from Madagascar,” in the Journal of Development Studies (2011); “Comparing Population Distributions from Bin-Aggregrated Sample Data: An Application to Historical Height Data from France” in Economics & Human Biology (2011); “Family Background, School Characteristics and Children’s Cognitive Achievement in Madagascar,” in Education Economics (2011); and “Partial Multidimensional Inequality Orderings,” in the Journal of Public Economics (2011).

Research Areas research areas

Geographic Focus

administrative responsibilities

  • Administrative responsibilities include operating a collaborative research and training program for African scholars, funded by the African Economic Research Consortium, to examine the nature and determinants of poverty and approaches to raise household incomes. In addition, as Director of the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program, I manage a large number of externally funded research, training, and technical assistance projects.