In parallel, from 1981 to early 1987, Woodruff worked as economist and manager of financial planning of the Central Power and Light Company in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Additionally, Woodruff is affiliated with the NBER,[3] Centre for Competitive Advantage and the Global Economy (CAGE), Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), CEPR, and IZA.
[6] In his research, Woodruff has been a frequent co-author of David McKenzie (World Bank) and Suresh de Mel (University of Peradeniya).
Comparing post-communist Russia and Ukraine to Poland, Slovakia and Romania, they find the size of 'unofficial' activity to be much larger in the former two than in the latter three, mostly due to higher effective tax rates, worse bureaucratic corruption, grater incidence of mafia protection, and less trust in the court system;[11][12] the central role of entrepreneurs in transition economies is further explored by Woodruff and McMillan in a JEP article.
[16] In further research, Woodruff and McKenzie randomly provided Mexican retail SMEs with cash and in-kind grants, which led to estimated returns to capital of at least 20-33% per month, with the effects being concentrated among those firms with the highest financial constraints.
[17] Together with Luc Laeven, Woodruff has also found a positive relationship between the size of firms in Mexico and the quality of the legal system, especially for proprietorships.
[25] Finally, more recently, when comparing the impact of cash and in-kind grants on the profitability of microenterprises in urban Ghana, Woodruff, Marcel Fafchamps, McKenzie and Simon Quinn found a flypaper effect whereby - unlike cash - capital coming directly into the business "sticks" there, though neither type of grants has an impact on enterprise profitability when provided to female subsistence entrepreneurs.