Esther Duflo
The economist who is humanizing the dismal science
Intro
Esther Duflo is a French-American economist and a professor at MIT. As a co-founder of MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), she has spent her career researching the economic lives of the world’s poorest people, and finding ways to alleviate poverty that are grounded in behavioral science. In 2019, she became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, which she won alongside Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer.
Laypeople and economists alike have a tendency to simplify poverty and the people who experience it, leading them to suggest policies and aid campaigns that are overly reductive. Instead of following suit, Duflo and her colleagues take an experimental, evidence-based approach that has revolutionized the way social policy research is done. According to J-PAL, the initiatives led by the institute and others in its network have directly affected policy in 28 countries, reaching over 400 million people.1
All too often, the economics of poverty gets mistaken for poor economics: Because the poor possess very little, it is assumed that there is nothing interesting about their economic existence. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding severely undermines the fight against global poverty: Simple problems beget simple solutions.
– Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, Poor Economics
About the Author
Julian Hazell
Julian is passionate about understanding human behavior by analyzing the data behind the decisions that individuals make. He is also interested in communicating social science insights to the public, particularly at the intersection of behavioral science, microeconomics, and data science. Before joining The Decision Lab, he was an economics editor at Graphite Publications, a Montreal-based publication for creative and analytical thought. He has written about various economic topics ranging from carbon pricing to the impact of political institutions on economic performance. Julian graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Management.
