Stephen D. O’Connell holds a B.A. in Economics from Boston College and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Economics from the Graduate Center, CUNY. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, and joined Emory University’s Department of Economics as Assistant Professor in 2018, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. In early 2025, he served as Visiting Senior Research Associate at the Becker-Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. He is affiliated with the JPAL/IPA Displaced Livelihoods Initiative (since 2023), the Households in Conflict Network (since 2020), and IZA Institute of Labor Economics (since 2015). His research examines how social protection programs and political institutions shape economic outcomes. He combines randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental methods, and qualitative fieldwork to answer questions of contemporary policy import.
Since 2010, Dr. O’Connell has worked with international and national organizations on research and policy engagements. He consulted to and later served as Lead Specialist/Principal Investigator at the World Bank on private-sector development and poverty research (2010–2018), co-led an engagement with UNHCR to design and evaluate the cash transfer targeting system for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and has collaborated with UN agencies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan to implement field experiments on poverty targeting and social assistance. He has served as a grant reviewer for DFID-IZA, the World Bank, NSF, 3ie, the William T. Grant Foundation, and serves as a peer-reviewer for academic journals in Economics and Political Science.
He has received grants from NSF, JPAL/IPA, and the World Bank; directs Emory Economics’ undergraduate research and Honors Programs; and mentors Ph.D. and undergraduate students. He speaks English and Spanish.