Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance.
Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries including health, education, access to finance, household behavior, and policy evaluation. With Abhijit Banerjee, she is the co-author of “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty,” which won the Financial Times & Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011. Duflo is the Editor of the American Economic Review, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Her first degrees were in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. She received a doctorate in economics from MIT.
