Berkley Center

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 (J-PAL), a research network specializing in randomized evaluations of social programs. Duflo's research focuses on the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She is the author of Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011, with Abhijit V. Banerjee) and a member of the President’s Global Development Council. She has been awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (2015), the A.SK Social Science Award (2015), Infosys Prize (2014), and the David N. Kershaw Award (2011), among others. Duflo has degrees in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris and a Ph.D. from MIT.