Stephen C. Smith is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University, where he has been Chair of the Department of Economics since 2019. Smith received his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University and has been a Fulbright Research Scholar, a Jean Monnet Research Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings, a Fulbright Senior Specialist, UNICEF Senior Fellow at the Office of Research- Innocenti, a member of the Advisory Council of BRAC USA, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. He has twice served as Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP).

Smith is the co-author with Michael Todaro of Economic Development (13th Edition, Pearson, 2020); revisions for the 14th Edition are in progress. He is also author of Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works (paperback edition Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and co-editor with Jennifer Brinkerhoff and Hildy Teegen of NGOs and the Millennium Development Goals: Citizen Action to Reduce Poverty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He is also author or coauthor of over 50 professional journal articles and many other publications.

A large part of Smith’s recent research has focused on extreme poverty and strategies and programs to address it; and on the economics of adaptation and resilience to climate change in low-income countries, emphasizing autonomous adaptation by households and communities and its effects, and adaptation financing. Smith is principal investigator on the BASIS-funded "Project on Complementarities of Training, Technology, and Credit in Smallholder Agriculture: Impact, Sustainability, and Policy for Scaling-up in Senegal and Uganda." His current research includes the impact of irrigation on horticulture productivity and family outcomes, including child nutrition and health; determinants and effects of adaptation to heat waves.

In addition to development economics, Smith has contributed to the economic analysis of labor participation, including works councils, employee board representation, worker cooperatives, employee ownership, and profit sharing. His current research in this area includes cross-national determinants of nonunion employee representation systems; an economic analysis of works council elections; and faculty senates as an employee representation system (working papers for each forthcoming soon).

Smith organized and served as first director of GWU’s International Development Studies Program. He has done on site research and program work in developing countries including Bangladesh, China, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Peru, Senegal, Slovenia, and Uganda; and has been a consultant for the World Bank, the International Labour Organization (ILO, Geneva), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the U.S. Agency for International Development (IZA), the Small Enterprise Assistance Fund (SEAF), and the World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER, Helsinki).

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in May 2012.