Marcel Fafchamps is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Fafchamps is a Professor (by courtesy) for the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His research interest includes economic development, market institutions and social networks. His current research focuses on entrepreneurship, factor markets, and the efficiency of social networks in Africa and South Asia. Fafchamps also has ongoing research on political economy issues in Africa and Asia.

Prior to joining FSI, from 1999-2013, Fafchamps served as Professor of Development Economics for the Department of Economics and Mansfield College at Oxford University. He also served as Deputy Director and then Co-Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. Fafchamps spent the 2005-2006 academic year on sabbatical leave as Visiting Scholar at Harvard University.

From 1989 to 1996 Fafchamps was an Assistant Professor with the Food Research Institute at Stanford University. Following the closure of the Institute, he taught for two years for the Department of Economics. For the 1998-1999 academic year, Fafchamps was on sabbatical leave at the research department of the World Bank. Before pursuing his PhD in 1986, Fafchamps was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for five years during his employment with the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency overlooking issues of employment, income distribution, and vocational training in Africa.

He has authored two books, Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence, published by MIT Press in 2004 and Rural Poverty, Risk, and Development, published in 2003 by Elgar Press and has published numerous articles in academic journals. Fafchamps serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Economic Development and Cultural Change. Previously he had served as Chief Editor of the Journal of African Economies from 2000 until 2013, Associate Editor for the Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and the Revue d'Economie du Développement.

He is a Senior Fellow with the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Fellow with Center for Economic and Policy Research, and an Associate with University of California’s Center for Effective Global Action. Fafchamps studied law and economics at the Université Catholique de Louvain. He holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California Berkeley and won an outstanding PhD thesis award from the American Agricultural Economists Association.