Jeff Dayton-Johnson

Associate Professor and Program Chair

I am passionate about better understanding what drives inequality, marginalization, social exclusion on the one hand, and collective action and social cohesion on the other -- and how to mobilize that understanding to have less of the former and more of the latter around the world.

What excites me about being a professor at MIIS is the extraordinary energy and productive diversity of the students and faculty alike. It's exciting to walk around campus and hear so many languages being spoken, so many causes being championed, so many ideas being debated, so many projects being launched!

Jeff Dayton-Johnson is a development economist who joined the Monterey Institute of International Studies in August 2011. Previously, he was the Head of the OECD Development Centre’s Latin America and Caribbean Desk, the principal activity of which is the OECD Latin American Economic Outlook.  While at the OECD, Jeff also worked on issues related to African economic development, natural disasters, policy coherence for development, international migration, fiscal policy and economic inequality. His research has covered other policy-relevant topics, including local management of natural resources, social cohesion and economic performance, the microeconomics of cooperation, and public policy of culture and the arts.

Before joining the OECD in 2004, Jeff’s experiences ranged from coaxing a sometimes-stubborn Volkswagen through rural Mexico to interview farmers in peasant irrigation societies, to delivering economics training courses to public servants in Eastern Europe; from advising Canadian federal and provincial policy-makers on matters of cultural policy, social cohesion and foreign aid, to teaching and advising several cohorts of energetic students in the Master of Development Economics program that he coordinated for many years at Dalhousie University in Canada. He has also taught courses at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po) in Paris.

Jeff received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and received his undergraduate education in Latin American Studies at Berkeley and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Jeff writes regularly about jazz and is a contributor to All About Jazz, the most widely-read online jazz review.