Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo, Caroline ( born October 25, 1972 in Paris ) is a French economist and university lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she holds the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty - alleviation and development economics. The focus of research is on Duflos microeconomic issues in developing countries, including the behavior of households, education policy, access to financial services, health policy and the evaluation of economic policy measures.

The Economist counted in 2008 to the eight most influential economists in the world. Time magazine counted in 2011 among the 100 most influential people in the world. Her book Poor Economics was declared by the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2011. U.S. President Barack Obama announced on 21 December 2012, they appointed to the Advisory Council präsidentialen for Global Development. Your task is to advise the U.S. president and senior members of the government. Left critics throw their claims to represent the disciplining of the poor rather than social change. The macroeconomic and political- structural causes of poverty are not a subject of their analysis and they did not want a redistribution of society's resources in favor of the poor.

Life

Childhood and education

Esther Duflo is the daughter of the doctor Violaine Duflo and the mathematician Michel Duflo. She studied at the École Grande école normale supérieure (Paris), from which she received in 1994 Maitrise Diploma in History and Economics. In 1995, she completed her graduate studies at the later Paris School of Economics (then DELTA - Département et Laboratoire d' Economie et théorique Appliquée ) with a DEA in Economics. Thereafter, Duflo moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his PhD in 1999 with the dissertation "Three Essays in Empirical Development Economics " (Three Essays in Empirical Development Economics ).

Professional career

After receiving her Ph.D. in economics was Duflo Assistant Professor of Economics at MIT before she was promoted to associate professor in 2002 and 2004 into a full Professor of Economics. From 2001 to 2002 Duflo further taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University. In 2003, Duflo and Mullainathan Sendhil jointly with Abhijit Banerjee at MIT the Poverty Action Lab, whose director was Duflo 2004. The Poverty Action Lab is a research network focused on developing new methods to fight poverty and evaluation of economic policy measures devoted to randomized controlled field experiments, and was renamed the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab in 2005. At the same time Duflo received the newly created Abdul- Latif Jameel - Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT

In addition to her teaching and research Duflo been working since 2007 as an editor for economics journals Annual Review of Economics and The American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, where she is co-founder of the latter publication. Previously, Duflo editorial for the Review of Economics and Statistics (2002-2007), the Journal of Development Economics (2004-2006), the Journal of Economic Perspectives (2004-2007) and the Journal of the European Economic Association (2002-2006 ) active.

Research

According to the economics publication database IDEAS Duflo part in the overall ranking significantly to the top 1% of economists (Rank 241). Even under criteria such as " number of publications " or " number of citations " Duflo is among the top 5% of the data collected in the database economists. The most frequently cited articles Duflos entitled How Much Should We Trust Differences -in- Differences Estimates (2002) and was co-authored with Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan. In this article, Bertrand, Duflo and Mullainathan Difference -in- Difference Estimation (DID) analysis, an estimation method for causal relationships, and come to the conclusion that DID significantly underestimated the standard error of the estimated effect of the studied intervention in its conventional use. To address the autocorrelation problem, make Bertrand, Duflo and Mullainathan finally three solutions: a collapse of the data in the periods before and after the procedure, the use of a special covariance matrix or an adaptation of Randomisierungsinterferenz test methods.

Awards

Duflo 2003 Elaine Bennett Prize for Research was awarded in 2005 by the Cercle des Economistes the Best Young French Economist Prize of the newspaper Le Monde. Also in 2005 Duflo was awarded the bronze medal of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS ). 2010 Duflo was the John Bates Clark Medal for her work with field experiments that make the effectiveness of economic measures comparable awarded. In addition, Duflo since 2009 a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other awards and honors include, among other things, the medal Duflos de l' Innovation of the CNRS (2011), the David N. Kershaw Award of appam (2011), the Thomas C. Schelling Award from the Harvard Kennedy School (2011 ), an honorary doctorate from the Université catholique de Louvain (2010 ) and the Calvó Almengol International Prize of the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics ( 2009). 2013 Duflo was awarded the Dan David Prize.

Trivia

Esther Duflo has both French nationality and since 2012 the U.S. citizenship. She lives with Abhijit Banerjee, who is a professor of economics and has also worked with the Duflo at several of their research since the fall of 2010; they have a child together.

Publications (selection)

• Is Decentralized iron fortification a feasible option to fight anemia among the poorest? In: David A. Wise (ed.): Explorations in the economics of aging. University Press, Chicago, Ill. 2011, ISBN 978-0-226-90337-8, pp. 317-344.
• Requiescat in pace? The Consequences of high -priced funerals in South Africa. In: David A. Wise (ed.): Explorations in the economics of aging. University Press, Chicago, Ill. 2011, ISBN 978-0-226-90337-8, pp. 351-373.
• Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo: Poor Economics. A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. Public Affairs, New York 2011, ISBN 978-1-58648798-0 ( German edition: Poor Economics: A plea for a new understanding of poverty, ISBN 978-3813504934 ).
• Rema Hanna and Esther Duflo: Monitoring works. Getting teachers to come to school. CEPR, London, 2006.
• Interview with Banerjee and Duflo time