Portrait of Esther Duflo

Science Breakthrough

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Esther Duflo

  • 2017
  • Speaker
  • Social Sciences & Humanities

Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. One of the world’s leading economists, she has spent the past 25 years looking for effective remedies to global poverty. In countless field trips and by introducing innovative experiments to her discipline, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. The results of her work have deeply influenced contemporary aid and development strategies and her research has gained her numerous awards and honours, including the McArthur Fellowship, the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences and The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019.