Matt Ribar

Matthew K. Ribar is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and a graduate fellow at Stanford’s Center for African Studies. His book-style dissertation explores the political economy of land, development, and informality in sub-Saharan Africa. This project combines survey experiments, machine learning, a natural experiment, administrative data, and in-depth qualitative fieldwork to show how and when customary chiefs moderate the relationship between the value of land and the demand for formal property rights.

In other work, he collaborates with Mercy Corps to run a large-scale random control trial in Niger to study how conflict resolution training can reduce youth vulnerability to violent extremism. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship. His work has also been supported by the United States Agency for International Development, the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth Initiative, the Stanford King Center on International Development, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the SurveyCTO Graduate Research Grant. 

Before coming to Stanford, he worked as a program associate at Mathematica Policy Research in support of impact evaluations of Millennium Challenge Corporation programs in Senegal, Benin, Liberia, and Cabo Verde. He also worked for the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project and for the Pacific Small Arms Action Group. He holds an MA in political science from Stanford University and a BA in International Relations jointly from the College of William & Mary and the University of St. Andrews.