Betty Sadoulet was a longtime faculty member in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a leader in the field of international economic development. In tireless collaboration with Professor Alain de Janvry, Betty helped shape generation after generation of graduate students — mentoring them through research projects in developing countries, launching them into impactful careers in academia and leading international organizations, and continuing to guide them throughout their professional journeys.
Betty was the living embodiment of Berkeley: a world-renowned institution dedicated to making the world a better place through research, teaching, and service.
Betty passed away after a valiant battle with cancer. She died in Lyon, where she had spent her recent years since retiring—in name only. Even in retirement, she worked tirelessly with Graduate Advisor Carmen Karahalios and our Head Graduate Advisor Michael Anderson to support ARE graduate students in navigating our PhD program. She remained a regular Zoom presence at the weekly development workshop, organized by Professor Ethan Ligon and her development colleagues, held at a time compatible with the Berkeley-Lyon time difference. These workshops gave students an invaluable space to receive feedback on their work in progress.
Betty also continued her own research, publishing actively with her favorite coauthors—including many of her former students. Her recent work appeared in top journals, including the Annual Review of Resource Economics (2022), American Economic Review (2023), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (2024), and Journal of Development Economics (2025). Betty’s post-retirement scholarly contributions were so substantial that she could have earned tenure again—anywhere in the world.
The twinkle in Betty’s eye just before she delivered a brilliant insight—or asked a question that made us all tremble (if it was aimed at us!) but ultimately deepened our understanding of the world—is one of the things we will miss most at ARE. The other is her giant heart.
Betty will be buried on Saturday, October 25, 2025, in Lissieu, France.
Rest in peace, dear Betty. We will always remember you.
– The ARE Chair, on behalf of Betty’s ARE Family
Colleagues, friends, and former students were invited to leave a message or photo in honor of Betty. We hope you find space to reflect, to grieve, and to feel thankful for having had Betty in your life. We hope that reading these memories and tributes may bring comfort as well.
A video of Betty thanking her students for the occasion of Betty and Alain’s retirement VIDEO
Daily Californian Article by Ayah Alsheikha | Staff and Environmental Economics and Policy Major student in ARE.
Read also the U C Berkeley News in memoriam article from Nov 5, 2025(link is external)(link is external).
Professor and ARE alumnus Kyle Emerick, honoring Betty at the North East Universities Development Consortium 2025 Conference at Tufts University, November 2025
Obituary follows below
Elisabeth “Betty” Sadoulet
Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of California at Berkeley
1945-2025
Elisabeth “Betty” Sadoulet, a Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) at the University of California, Berkeley, was a leader in international economic development.
Born on October 4, 1945, in Lyon, France, Professor Sadoulet received an undergraduate degree (Diplôme d'études approfondies) in applied mathematics and statistics from the University of Lyon in 1968, and a Doctorat (PhD) en sciences économiques et sociales, mention économétrie et statistiques, from the University of Geneva in 1982. After starting in 1985 as a Lecturer and Assistant Research Economist in ARE, she became an Associate Professor in 1995. From 2001 until her retirement in 2017, she was a beloved Professor in ARE. During her illustrious career, Professor Sadoulet was the editor of the World Bank Economic Review from 2010 to 2013 and was a fellow of several scholarly associations in agriculture and economics, including the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Professor Sadoulet worked in an advisory capacity with many governments and international organizations, including the Government of Mexico, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank, and the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research(UNU-WIDER) in Helsinki. She was also a senior fellow at the Fondation pour les Études et la Recherche sur le Développement International (FERDI) in France.
Cornell University Professor and longtime friend Erik Thorbecke observes that Professor Sadoulet’s impressive professional contributions effectively and harmoniously combined intellectual curiosity, rigor, humanism, a touch of skepticism, and a constant attempt at clarity. Professor Sadoulet acknowledged Angus Deaton, Irma Adelman, Abhijit Banerjee, and Esther Duflo as having influenced her approach to economics as both a quantitative and an experimental discipline, in which rigorous analysis served as the basis for policy recommendations in normative work with governments, organizations, NGOs, and the private sector. Nobel Laureate Ester Duflo, a Professor at MIT, comments that when first meeting “Betty, her reputation as a scholar whose work was deeply rooted in the reality of life in low and middle income countries preceded her, and I was a little nervous.” MIT Professor and Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee sees “Betty Sadoulet as a unique heroic figure in her generation of development economists, kind and approachable, and committed to the social good, while deeply serious when it came to the quality of research. Always ready with a smile, but mindful of details and nuance. A mentor to a whole generation of outstanding Berkeley students and others.”
Professor Sadoulet's research mainly focused on agricultural economics. Throughout her career, she focused on "how to make agriculture into an effective instrument for development", believing that it is underused and misused, but still presents unique opportunities. Beginning with a focus on growth and poverty, her work addressed vulnerability to poverty and risk, inequality and inequity, basic needs in health and education, access to assets, microfinancing, land rental contracts, technology innovation, social programs, community-driven development, adaptation to climate change, resource scarcity, cooperative management of common property resources, and governance.
Professor Sadoulet published widely, including in The American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, and World Development. In addition, Sadoulet co-authored two textbooks with Professor Alain de Janvry: Quantitative Development Policy Analysis (1995, 2003) and Development Economics: Theory and Practice (2016, 2021). Even after her retirement, Professor Sadoulet continued to publish with her favorite coauthors, including many of her former students. Her recent work since retirement has appeared in top journals, including the Annual Review of Resource Economics (2022), the American Economic Review (2023), the American Economic Journal: Applied (2024), and the Journal of Development Economics (2025).
Professor Sadoulet was a longtime faculty member and an intellectual pillar in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. The former Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources, Professor Gordon Rausser, remembers one of his happiest days was when Sadoulet was “unanimously and enthusiastically appointed as a tenured faculty member in ARE. Sadoulet elevated the standards of our PhD program like no one else, instilling in us a deep appreciation for rigorous empirical economic analysis and the critical importance of identification in isolating causality. We miss her presence every day and her warm, unmistakable smile.” Professor Sadoulet was “honest and unflinching in her pursuit of truth, generous in sharing her wisdom, and tireless in her dedication to her field, especially to our students. That she continued contributing meaningful work until the very end was characteristic of someone who saw scholarship not as a job, but as a calling,” recalls Professor Ethan Ligon. Professor Jeremy Magruder believes that “Betty was a mentor to all of us in the department - students and faculty alike - as she embodied the example of combining care and conscientiousness with rigor in solving big problems in economic development and training the next generation of researchers.” ARE staff person Diana Lazo described her as “Tough and tender, that is Betty Sadoulet.” That “Berkeley will not be the same place without her – and she cannot be replaced in our lives,” concluded her colleague from the Economics Department, Professor Ted Miguel.
In tireless collaboration with Professor Alain de Janvry, Professor Sadoulet helped shape the careers of successive generations of graduate students. “They hosted the legendary Friday workshop where graduate students would be rigorously questioned on their research. Betty was tough but fair. Many students who became leaders in their fields were shaped in that room, where Betty combined high expectations with a healthy dose of fear—always bringing out the best in people,” recalls ARE colleague Professor Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, a regular workshop participant. Even in retirement and during her final illness, she worked tirelessly with Graduate Advisor Carmen Karahalios and her colleague and Head Graduate Advisor, Professor Michael Anderson, to support ARE graduate students in navigating the ARE PhD program.
“You knew she had Friday office hours going when you saw 7 or 8 ARE PhD students lined up outside her office in Giannini. She diligently helped each and every one of those students, often staying well into the evening,” recalls former student, Tufts Professor, and co-author Kyle Emerick. Professor Shaoda Wang at the University of Chicago Harris School, and a former student, credits Professor Sadoulet as continuing “to support and inspire. Whatever I may take pride in professionally, I owe it to Betty.” Carly Trachtman, one of Professor Sadoulet's former PhD students and now at IFPRI, credits Betty's mentorship and fierce loyalty to her students as key drivers of Carly’s success as a professional economist. Former student and colleague in the Department of Economics at Berkeley, Professor Frederico Finan, believes that “Betty was a passionate researcher and a dedicated advisor. But perhaps even more importantly, she was a kind and generous human being who reminded us never to lose sight of the deeper purpose of our work—to improve the lives and opportunities of those living in poverty around the world. This is a deeply sad day for the profession, and I will miss her dearly.”
Former student Professor Karen Macours, now at the Paris School of Economics fondly remembers, "Betty as a role model who fundamentally shaped the way so many of us understand economics and how to put it to good use, through her sharpness of thought, joint field work, feedback sessions, brainstorming, policy engagements, and dinners at her home, all while creating a community of friends through which her deep influence will live on." As he now mentors PhD students, University of Bordeaux Professor Tanguy Bernard observes that “as much as I can to live up to the guidance I received from Betty — grounding hypotheses in field observations, nurturing intuition, emphasizing the importance of rigor, and, perhaps most importantly, striving to make it all meaningful beyond academia.”
Pompeo Fabra Professor Gianmarco Leon credits Betty for “pushing me to my best with rigor and kindness, and I am eternally grateful to her for that. She will be dearly missed.” Former student and World Bank Economist Abdou Cisse and his wife Khadija Diop hope that “her academic legacy, present all over the world, will make her absence more bearable. She leaves a strong, silent, and beautiful mark. And in the hearts of those who were lucky enough to know her, her memory will continue to flourish. Or, in Professor Sadoulet’s native French, “son héritage académique, présent un peu partout dans le monde, rendra son absence plus supportable — elle laisse une empreinte forte, silencieuse et belle. Et dans le cœur de ceux qui ont eu la chance de la connaître, sa mémoire continuera de fleurir."
Professor Sadoulet was the living embodiment of Berkeley: A world-renowned institution dedicated to making the world a better place through research, teaching, and service. The twinkle in Betty’s eye just before she delivered a brilliant insight—or asked a question that made us all tremble (if it was aimed at us!) but ultimately deepened our understanding of the world—is one of the two things we will miss most. The other is her giant heart.
Professor Sadoulet passed away on October 17, 2025, after a valiant battle with cancer. She died in Lyon, where she had spent her recent years since retiring. Surviving family loved ones are Professor Alain de Janvry, Professor Bernard Sadoulet, her three children, Hélène, Loïc, and Samuel, and their spouses, her ten grandchildren, and her brother and two sisters, as well as spouses and nephews.
Alain de Janvry, Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics
Sofia Berto Villas-Boas Chair, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Professor Betty Sadoulet’s grave with the Cal bear leading her hommages,
at Lissieu, France, October 25, 2025