Teferi Mergo

Teferi Mergo is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo (UW), with appointments at United College and the Economics department. He is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics (Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa), an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford (Centre for the Study of African Economies in the Department of Economics), a Research Fellow at Global Labour Organization and has been recognised for research excellence at UW.

Dr. Mergo’s published studies gauge the impacts on economic development of demographic transition, international migration, ethnic favouritism, representative government, and English medium instruction, and he has ongoing research projects (some under review) that investigate the impacts of housing development programs, financial deepening, and horizontal inequality on development. He has authored policy articles and analytical pieces exploring the causes of civil conflicts in Ethiopia, arguing that the recurrent civil wars in the country are manifestations of power imbalances among its ethnic communities, and they might be resolved with a carefully calibrated devolution of power from the centre to the peripheries.

He earned his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are in the fields of development economics, political economy, and demographic economics, with sub-Saharan Africa as the region of focus.