Alleviating poverty and sharing knowledge globally with Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo, an acclaimed economist renowned for her transformative approaches to poverty alleviation, speaks with Christopher Capozzola, Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning, in an Open Conversation about Duflo's pioneering work and her efforts to disseminate knowledge through massive open online courses (MOOCs) in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy. These courses have also been integrated into the unique MITx MicroMasters program.

About the speakers

Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Chaire, Pauvreté et politiques publiques at the Collège de France. In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of people living in poverty, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance.

Professor Esther Duflo’s first degrees were in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. She subsequently received a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1999.

Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes including 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (with co-Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer), the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (2015), the A.SK Social Science Award (2015), Infosys Prize (2014), the David N. Kershaw Award (2011), a John Bates Clark Medal (2010), and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship (2009). With Abhijit Banerjee, she wrote Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011 and has been translated into more than 17 languages, and Good Economics for Hard Times.

Duflo is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

Christopher Capozzola is Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning. He oversees open education offerings including OpenCourseWare, MITx, and MicroMasters, as well as the Digital Credentials Consortium, MIT Digital Learning Lab, Digital Learning in Residential Education, and MIT Video Productions. A faculty member with more than 20 years of experience at MIT, he is committed to teaching and is a passionate advocate for open knowledge communities at MIT and around the world.