EiSitàAtEconomia e Società Aperta BiBocconi Lecture 2010 Esther Duflo MhttMassachusetts ItittInstituteof ThTechno logy Education … the best of France and the best of the United States 1994 Ecole Normale Supérieure 1995 Delta, Paris 1999 PhD in Econom ics, MIT Career 1999 Successful job market, career started at MIT 2001 Tenured professor at age 29 Now Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, MIT ¾Founder and director of Jameel Poverty Action Lab ¾Visiting Professor at Princeton --- CEPR and NBER Research Fellow Honors and Awards 2010 John Bates Clark Medal 2009 MacArthur Fellowship 2008 Internat iona l cha ir “Know le dge aggygainst Poverty”, College de France 2005 Best French Young Economist Prize 2003 Ela ine Bennet Pr ize from AEA April 2010 … Ricardo Caballero, MIT chair, says • “We are extremely happy for Esther and MIT” • “She has bilbuilt one of the most successflful academic careers I can recall in recent times while making a huge difference for the poor around the world.” 1947 PAUL SAMUELSON 1957 KENNETH ARROW 1961 ROBERT SOLOW 1967 GARY BECKER 1975 DANIEL MCFADDEN 1979 JOSEPH STIGLITZ John Bates 1981 MICHAEL SPENCE 1983 JAMES HECKMAN Clark Medal 1989 DAVID KREPS 1991 PAUL KRUGMAN 2005 DARON ACEMOGLU 2008 SUSAN ATHEY 2009 EMMANUEL SAEZ 2010 ESTHER DUFLO Motivation ¾ Esther Duflo has distinguished herself through definitive contributions to the field of Development Economics ¾ Through her research, mentoring of young scholars, and role in helping to direct the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, she has played a major role in setting a new agenda for the field of Development Economics, one that focuses on microeconomic issues and relies heavily on large-scale field experiments ¾ Much of her work addresses questions of politics, gender, and education. She has written extensively on India, but has also studied Indonesia, Ivory Coast, South Africa, and Kenya. The key methodological insight • Sometimes the technology, the infrastructure, the funding, and the intenti on to "do good" are in place, but how do we know if the system is effective if we do not have a means for measuring progress and results? • Esther Duflo's use of randomized controlled trials to assess aid effectiveness has become a hot topic among economists and the humanitarian community • Controlled studies allow researchers to discover what works, whthat does not work, and why does it not work in a systema tic scientific method A sample of Esther Duflo’ s research Health The rate at which families in northern India will immunize their children jumps from about 5 percent to nearly 40 percent when parents are offered a small bag of lentils as an incentive Education In an experiment involving more than 120 schools in Kenya: dividing classes into groups based on student performance can help both high-achieving students (because they benefit from being around their strongest peers) and low-achieving students (because they can be taught at a level more comprehensible to them) Esther Duflo “We cannot helicopter people out of poverty” “I would like to practice a true human science – rigorous, impartial, a science of humans in its imperfections and complexities, humble and humane and generous” … January 16 Esther’s reply I am very grateful for the invitation. I am right now in a taxi going to take a night train from Calcutta to Bhubhaneswar ….