NBER profile: Esther Duflo.

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Esther Duflo is a Research Associate in the NBER'S Programs on Children, Education, and Aging and is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in MIT's Economics Department. She is also a founder and director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research network specializing in randomized evaluations of social programs, which won the 2009 BBVA Foundation "Frontier of Knowledge" award in the development cooperation category.

Duflo serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and is Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research's development economics program. Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behavior, education, access to finance, health, and policy evaluation.

Duflo completed her undergraduate studies at L'Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris in 1994, received a master's degree from DELTA in Paris in 1995, and completed a Ph.D. in Economics at MIT in 1999. Upon completing her Ph.D. she was appointed assistant professor of economics at MIT, and...