Mark Gersovitz is Professor in the Department of Economics at The Johns Hopkins University. His speciality is development economics, the study of the economies of poor countries. He continues his longstanding interests in: saving behavior and capital markets, especially when willingness-to-repay is a constraint; agriculture; public finance; international commodity markets; and health. Current research projects include: (1) the behavioral analysis of infectious diseases based on rational choice; (2) taxation in poor countries especially the interaction between taxation and the size distribution of firms; (3) civil wars especially in Africa.

He has travelled widely in Africa and Asia as an economic researcher and adviser, and has been a consultant to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Program and other organizations. From 1992 to 1994 he was the editor of The World Bank Research Observer and of The World Bank Economic Review. In 1993 and 1994 he was the Director of the Center for Research on Economic Development (CRED) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1999, he gave the Joseph Fisher Lecture at the University of Adelaide on Human Behaviour and the Transmission of Infectious Disease.

Typical of his writings are:

"Debt with Potential Repudiation: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," with J. Eaton, Review of Economic Studies, vol. 48, no. 152 (April 1981), pp. 289-309. Reprinted in Bird, G. and P. N. Snowden, International Debt, vol. 1 (Cheltenham: Elgar, 1995) pp. 56-74.

"Savings and Nutrition at Low Incomes," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 91, no. 5 (October 1983), pp. 841-855.

"The Balance of Self-Reported Heterosexual Activity in KAP Surveys and the AIDS Epidemic in Africa," with H. Jacoby, T. Goze and D. Seri, Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 93 (September 1998), pp. 875-883.

"Economic Development and the Art of Maintenance," in Development, Duality and the International Regime: Essays in Honor of Gustav Ranis, eds. G. Saxonhouse and T. N. Srinivasan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 244-261.

"Births, Recoveries, Vaccinations and Externalities," in Economics for an Imperfect World: Essays in Honor of Joseph E. Stiglitz eds., R. J. Arnott, et al (Cambridge: MIT, 2003), pp. 469-483.

"Infectious Diseases, Public Policy, and the Marriage of Economics and Epidemiology," with J. S. Hammer, The World Bank Research Observer, vol. 18, no. 2 (2003), pp. 129-157.

"The Economical Control of Infectious Diseases," with J. S. Hammer, The Economic Journal, vol. 114, no. 492 (2004), pp. 1-27.