Esther Duflo Banerjee

Born: 1972

Country of Birth: France

Nationality: French-American

Ethnicity: White

Ecole Normale Superieure BA History & Economics 1994; MA 1995 from DELTA (now Paris School of Economics) in conjunction with the Ecole Normale Superieure, Ecole Polytechnique & ENSAE; MIT PhD Economics 1999

"“There are not enough women in the economics profession at all levels,” Duflo said. “That has to change.” (news.mit.edu); "Our goal is to make sure that the fight against poverty is based on scientific evidence." (Wikipedia); "But I retained both my self-confidence and the desire to never let my gender define what I would or could do." (nobelprize.org); "I theorized early that everyone must be excellent at least ONE thing, but do not necessarily get to find their spe­cial talent. This made my luck even more flagrant: since my one talent was to be a jack of all forms of schoolwork, I did not have to look very hard to find it: I was rewarded for it every day!" (nobelprize.org); Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/4c470b8e-1559-11ea-8d73-6303645ac406 “With a clinical trial, the idea is to go into production . . . In economics, RCTs play a different role, usually they are much more about trying to understand something totally fundamental about behaviour.” (ft.com); "I’m not very social, in the sense of cocktail-party social. I don’t like to talk to people I don’t know.” (newyorker.com); “I can’t really remember a time where I didn’t do whatever I wanted to do,” she said. “Partly because my parents are laid-back, and partly because I was not very willing to let anybody interfere with my plans.” (newyorker.com); "“One of my great assets of being in this business, or maybe I’ve developed it over time, is I don’t have many opinions to start with,” she told me. “I have one opinion—one should evaluate things—which is strongly held. I’m never unhappy with the results. I haven’t yet seen a result I didn’t like.” (newyorker.com); “Economics is about behavior, rational and less rational. And about how behavior responds to the environment, and how we can shape the environment to get people to act differently, and whether it’s good for them. Very quickly, when you start evaluating programs, you get into these kinds of issues.” (newyorker.com); “You never go from a small experiment somewhere to scaling up to the entire world,” Dr. Duflo said. But as information accumulates, “you start to understand the overall structure of a problem, and you see what might replicate and what might not.” (nytimes.com); "People need to have meaning in their life. They need to make a difference in their job. People are looking for respect in the job that they are doing, and in the community they’re living in, and that’s much, much more dominant than the financial incentive." (nytimes.com); "

— Esther Duflo Banerjee

Field of Study: Economics

Institution/Corporation: MIT; Paris School of Economics; J-PAL

Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degrees: Universite catholique de Louvain (2010), Erasmus Academy of Sciences (2019), University of Geneva (2023), Simon Fraser University (2023), University of Pennsylvania (2023), Amherst College (2017), Yale University (2013), London Busioness School (2012); Member: National Academy of Sciences (2017) Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Paris School of Economics (2024), Board Member Bureau For Research & Economic Anaylsis of Development (BREAD), American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2009), American Academy of Political & Social Sciences (2016), Fellow Econometric Society (2011), Fellow MacArthur Foundation (2009), President's global Development Council

Awards: 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer); 2009 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship; 2010 John Bates Clark Medal, American Economic Association; 2009 BBVA Foundation of Knowledge Award for Developmental Cooperation; 2015Princess Asturias Award for Social Science; 2015 A.SK Social Science Award; 2014 Infosys Prize; 2011 David N. Kershaw Award; 2013 John von Neumann Award; 2013 Dan David Prize; 2010 Calvo-Armengol International Prize; 2002 Elaine Bennett Research Prize, American Economic Association; 2005 Best Young French Economist Prize, Cercle des economistes; 2008 named 1 of Top 8 Young Economists in the World, The Economist; 2008 named 1 of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals in the World, Foreign Policy magazine; 2010 Forbes 40 Under 40 list; 2011 named 1 of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, Times magazine; 2013 Officer of the French Order of Merit; 2022 Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement (with Abhijit Banerjee); 2021 French Legion of Honour Commander; 2023 Blue Metropolis Award, Lumieres sur les Inegalities; 2022 Committed to Caring, MIT Faculty Honors; 2014 Erna Hanmburger Prize, EPFL Wish Foundation; 2011 Thomas C. Schelling Award, Harvard Kennedy School

Achievements: work has helped transform antipoverty research and relief efforts; emphasizes the use of field experiments in research to realize the benefits of laboratory-style randomized, controlled trials; In one widely noted experiment, she and Abhijit Banerjee found that immunization rates for children in rural India jump dramatically (from 5 percent to 39 percent) when their families are offered modest incentives for immunization, such as lentils; range of topics she and Banerjee have studied is immense, and includes fertilizer use by Kenyan farmers, physician training in India, HIV prevention in Africa, the effects of small-scale lending programs, & the impact of aid programs in Indonesia; with Banerjee wrote 2 books, "Poor Economics" published in 2011 & "Good Economics for Hard Times" published in 2019