REVOLUTIONIZING DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
Esther Duflo, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, and Cofounder and Director, Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Why do the world’s poor stay poor? This question lies at the heart of the groundbreaking work of MIT’s Poverty Action Lab. Cofounder Esther Duflo contends that poverty eradication policies routinely fail due to an inadequate understanding of the lives of those living on less than 99 cents a day, and has devoted fifteen years to devising empirically backed solutions to the greatest challenges of global poverty. Join us for a conversation with this prominent development economist as she shares her perspective on the economics of poverty, the disproportionate poverty burden borne by women, and how to align the current development paradigm with the reality of the extreme poor.
Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and a cofounder and director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She was recently named by TIME magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” for 2011. Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behavior, education, access to finance, health, and policy evaluation. Duflo has received numerous awards including the John Bates Clark Medal, a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, and the American Economic Association's Elaine Bennett Prize for Research. Duflo is the founding editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. She received her undergraduate degree from L'Ecole Normale Supérieure, M.A. from DELTA in Paris, and Ph.D. from MIT.
Her new book, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, will be available for purchase and signing following the program.
Please note, MIT Professor Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, who was originally scheduled to participate in this discussion, will not be in attendance.