Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo is a recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. She is the youngest recipient and the second woman to win the Prize and she shares the award with fellow Leigh Bureau speakers Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer. Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and 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. Her work examines health, education, financial inclusion, environment, and governance.

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With her husband and research partner Abhijit Banerjee, Duflo wrote 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 in 2011 and has been translated into more than 17 languages. Her most recent book, also co-authored with Banerjee, is Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems. A Wall Street Journal bestseller, the book was deemed “an invigorating ride through 21st-century economics and a treasure trove of facts and findings” by The Times.

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In addition to the Nobel Prize, Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes including the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (2015), the A.SK Social Science Award (2015), Infosys Prize (2014), the David N. Kershaw Award (2011), a John Bates Clark Medal (2010), and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship (2009). 

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In 2024, Esther Duflo was named President of the Paris School of Economics. From 2017 to 2022, she served as the editor of the American Economic Review. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Duflo graduated from Ecole Normale Superieure and received her Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.