[1][2] He was previously a professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

[2] He received a diplôme in economics and public policy from the Institute d'Études Politiques de Paris in 1990, a DEA in economics from the Université Paris Dauphine in 1992, and a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1998, where he was advised by Robert Barro, Alberto Alesina, and Dale Jorgenson.

[1][5] Whilst a doctoral student at Harvard, he worked for the World Bank as short-term consultant between 1996 and 1997.

[1][7][8][9] In 2021, he was appointed a co-editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association, and became its managing editor in 2023.

[10][11] Wacziarg was the Edward Teller National Fellow at the Hoover Institution between 2002 and 2003, and has been a research associate at the NBER since 2006.