Xinshen Diao is currently the Deputy Division Director and a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategy and Governance Division of IFPRI and a subtheme leader for the CGIAR’s Policy, Institution, and Market Research Program (CRP2). She has extensive experience on managing large research programs and doing research on economic development and growth, intersectoral linkages, regional integration and dynamics, agricultural policies and institutional changes. She has published more than 100 articles in various peer-reviewed economic journals, IFPRI books and monographs, and external book chapters.

In recent years, Xinshen has focused on growth and poverty reduction analysis in Africa both at country level in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia and at the regional level including East Africa, West and Central Africa, and Southern Africa. She is the leading editor of a recent book titled “Strategies and priorities for African agriculture – economywide perspectives from country studies,” published by IFPRI. This book has been written as an outcome of IFPRI’s technical support to the CAADP process and has strong influence in scaling up public agricultural investment particularly in African countries’ staple food sector. Before coming to IFPRI, Xinshen was an assistant professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, stationed at the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and division director and assistant director general of the Economic Reform Institute of China in Beijing in the late 1980s. Xinshen earned a B.A. and M.A. in business economics from the Beijing Institute of Economics and a Ph.D. in applied economics from the University of Minnesota.