Esther Duflo

Esther Caroline Duflo, FBA (French: [ɛstɛʁ dyflo]; born 25 October 1972) is a French-American economist, and the Lemann Foundation Professor in Economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich (UZH). In 2019, she was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences alongside her husband Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".

In addition to her academic appointment, Duflo is the co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), an MIT-based research center promoting the use of randomized controlled trials in policy evaluation. As of 2020, more than 400 million people had been impacted by programs tested by J-PAL affiliated researchers. Since 2024, Duflo has also been the president of the Paris School of Economics alongside her appointment at MIT. In October 2025, the University of Zurich announced that Duflo and Banerjee would be joining the faculty of the UZH School of Business, Economics, and Informatics in July 2026.

Duflo is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a board member of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and the director of the development economics program of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Her research focuses on the microeconomics of development and spans topics such as household behavior, education, financial inclusion, political economy, gender, and health. Prior to receiving the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Duflo was awarded the Calvó-Armengol International Prize (2019), the Elaine Bennett Research Prize (2002) and the John Bates Clark Medal (2010) by the American Economic Association.

Together with Abhijit Banerjee, Duflo is the co-author of Poor Economics and Good Economics for Hard Times, published in April 2011 and November 2019, respectively. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Duflo is the seventh most frequently cited author on college syllabi for economics courses.