Esther Duflo is a French-American economist and Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. In 2019, at age 46, she became the second woman and youngest person to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded alongside Abhijit Banerjee (her husband) and Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Her work fundamentally transformed development economics through the pioneering use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate poverty interventions.
Duflo is the co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), an MIT-based research center established in 2003 that has become the world's leading authority on using RCTs for policy evaluation. Under her leadership, J-PAL has conducted over 1,000 randomized controlled trials across education, health, agriculture, and access to credit. Her research philosophy is straightforward: "Our goal is to make sure that the fight against poverty is based on scientific evidence."
Through J-PAL's work, Duflo's research has achieved extraordinary real-world impact. Over 400 million people have been reached by scale-ups of programs proven effective through J-PAL research. Notable achievements include providing remedial tutoring to over 5 million children in India and answering critical questions about deworming interventions that have shaped global healthcare policy. Her contributions have revolutionized how development programs are designed, tested, and implemented worldwide.
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Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; Paris, France