Esther Duflo
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. She is a recipient of the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. In her research, Professor Duflo seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has received the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, the A.SK Social Science Award, the Infosys Prize, the David N. Kershaw Award, a John Bates Clark Medal, and a MacArthur Fellowship (known as a “Genius Grant”). Professor Duflo is a coauthor of Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Her latest book is Good Economics for Hard Times. Professor 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. She earned degrees in history and economics from École normale supérieure and a PhD in economics from MIT.