UC Berkeley conference and JDE special issue in honor of Professor Elisabeth “Betty” Sadoulet
Call for papers
January 20, 2026
Subject
At the initiative of ARE chair Sofia Villas-Boas, a conference is being organized on the Berkeley campus to honor the professional achievements of late Professor Elisabeth “Betty” Sadoulet on Saturday October 17, 2026, one year to the day after her passing. Papers presented at the conference will be invited to be submitted for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Development Economics (JDE).
The scientific organizing committee for the Berkeley conference is composed of Alain de Janvry, Ethan Ligon, Jeremy Magruder, Karen Macours, Kyle Emerick, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, and Paul Gertler. Additional members to help edit the JDE special issue include Jing Cai, Shaoda Wang, and Tanguy Bernard. Overall supervision for the conference is provided by Sofia Villas-Boas, chair of ARE, with help from Eleanor Wiseman, Carly Trachtman, and Carmen Karahalios. Coordination for the JDE issue is assumed by Karen Macours, JDE Editor in Chief.
Motivation
Elisabeth Sadoulet, who passed away on October 17, 2025, in France at the age of 80 had been a professor in the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of California at Berkeley for more than 40 years. She did extensive research and teaching in the field of international development economics, with a particular focus on the role of agriculture for development and the organization of social programs to reduce poverty and hunger. She became known as one of the prominent development economists of her generation. She leaves behind a significant body of highly influential published books and papers, and a large number of undergraduate and doctoral students whose careers she helped shape and attain prominence. In a recent collection of opinions of former students, co-authors, and colleagues on her contributions, participants emphasized her unique ability to listen and counsel constructively; and her emphasis on analytical rigor, the grounding of hypotheses in field observations, and the relevance of policy implications of research results. Former students and collaborators also emphasized how their own approaches to research and teaching had been shaped by Betty’s methods and standards of excellence.
While Professor Sadoulet worked on a very large set of topics, the conference will focus on her signature approach to research and teaching, with rigorous analysis rooted in the reality of life in low- and middle-income countries, and with strong quantitative causal identification that serves as the basis for credible policy recommendations. Following her tradition, the organizing committee encourages the submission of papers authored by or co-authored with graduate students and junior members of the profession. The conference will bring together rigorous original empirical research contributions with policy implications, and will aim to discuss current and future directions in development economics research and policy, in light of the methodologies and perspectives offered by Elisabeth Sadoulet in her own work.
Call for papers to be presented
To indicate interest in presenting a paper at the conference, please send a one-page extended abstract by March 15, 2026, to the organizing committee. The abstract should explain the research question, hypotheses to be tested, research methods to be used, data to be collected or used, proposed analytical methods for establishing causality, intended impacts to be measured, and expected policy implications to be drawn. We welcome submissions on all topics in development economics.
Please use the following submission form.
Proposals will be reviewed by the conference organizing committee. Authors of papers selected for presentation at the conference will be notified by April 15, 2026.
The conference
The conference will be held in hybrid format on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. While the conference organizers cannot cover the costs for presenters or other participants, participation and presentation will be possible both in person or virtually for those who cannot attend physically.
The conference will start with a 40’ keynote presentation on the latest advances in causal inference in quantitative development research by Professor Guido Imbens from Stanford University. It will be followed by ten to twelve 20-25’ paper presentations, each with a 5-8’ discussion by a dedicated reviewer. Paper presentations and discussions will be complemented by a panel discussion with well-known development economists who will evaluate current trends and future directions in the type of research and teaching practiced in her career by Elisabeth Sadoulet. The panel discussion and the wider conference agenda will aim at assessing the new context and instruments for development post 2019, and their implications for the formulation of development questions and their rigorous quantitative analysis.
JDE special issue
Presenters at the conference will be invited to submit their work to a Special Issue of the JDE in honor of Elisabeth Sadoulet. For a paper to be considered for the Special Issue, please submit an extended abstract to the conference. The deadline for submission to the Special Issue will be December 31, 2026. Papers will then go through the normal editorial process. Accepted papers are expected to start appearing on the JDE website by mid-2027. The conference organizers will make every effort to purchase the open access rights of at least some of the papers to be published.
Submission of abstracts to the Organizing Committee
We invite you to send by March 15 the extended abstract of the paper you would like to present at the conference. Please use the following submission form
We thank the Following Conference Sponsors
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as well as a group of Betty’s former students from the incoming ARE class of 2011, via a matching donation in support of the conference.