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Why doesn’t research play a greater role in aid decisions?
Chapter in Biståndsinfo för alla, Fores, September 2026 (in Swedish).

Cycles of Infertility
Journal of Human Resources, forthcoming.

I am a Professor of Economics at Stockholm University. Before joining Stockholm, I held a position at Bocconi University in Milan, after completing my PhD in economics at the Stockholm School of Economics.

My research focuses on economic development and political economics, with related work on health and the family.

I study entrepreneurship in low-income countries, using field experiments to examine how access to liquidity and credit contract design affect business investment and growth, and why gender gaps persist in firms and agriculture. Other work examines the economic and social effects of religious renewal. My research also involves turning aerial photographs from before the satellite era into data for analyzing long-run growth, institutional change, and the effects of climate events.

In political economics, I ask when citizens can hold power to account. I investigate how protests influence public opinion and elections, and how public remembrance of state violence affects political participation under autocracy. I also study how peer interactions shape racial attitudes at the police academy.

Using Swedish administrative data, I assess how reproductive health policies shape women’s lives, whom they have children with, and their children’s health and well-being. I also examine how fertility problems persist across generations and the role of assisted reproduction.

I have published in journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Studies, and my research has been covered in Swedish and international media. I contribute to public debate on Swedish development aid, arguing that aid organizations should build research and evaluation into how they design and fund their programs.

I am a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and a member of the European Development Research Network (EUDN) and Theoretical Research in Development Economics (ThReD). I co-founded the Association of Swedish Development Economists (ASWEDE) and serve as its secretary.

You can contact me at andreas.madestam@su.se.