Esther Duflo
Development economist and Nobel laureate
Esther Duflo is a French-American economist who shared the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work on reducing global poverty. She co-wrote Good Economics for Hard Times.
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Born 1972 in Paris, France
About Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo was born in Paris on 25 October 1972. She is an economist whose research looks at the microeconomics of development, including household behavior, education, financial inclusion, gender and health. In 2019 she shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, honored for experimental methods to fight global poverty. She co-founded and co-directs the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research center based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that encourages the use of randomized controlled trials when evaluating policy. Since 2024 she has also served as president of the Paris School of Economics. With Banerjee, her husband, Duflo has written Poor Economics and Good Economics for Hard Times, the latter published in November 2019.