自从Susan Athey获得2007年克拉克奖之后的第二位获奖的女性。
Esther Duflo is a development economist exploring the social and economic forces perpetuating the cycle of poverty for the poorest peoples in South Asia and Africa. Combining innovative field experiments with rigorous empirical analysis, she identifies linkages and causal relationships between policy, poverty, behavior, and socioeconomic status. Much of Duflo’s work focuses on investigating the often disparate impact of economic interventions and social policies on women and children in developing nations. In one study, she measured the effect of monetary transfers to poor households for child health and found that pension transfers to grandmothers, rather than grandfathers, brought about the greatest improvement in the health of girls. Most recently, Duflo partnered with environmental economists to examine the long-term health effects on women and children of indoor pollution from traditional, solid-fuel cooking stoves. Through MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, which she co-founded, she has adapted randomized trial experiments, used extensively in the drug industry and experimental science, as a means of bringing increased rigor to the assessment of the costs and benefits of economic development interventions. Duflo also was among the founders of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis and Development (BREAD), a forum that facilitates the exchange of ideas among researchers working on development issues. Through these and many other projects, Duflo is enhancing international economic development policy and programs designed to improve the lives of impoverished populations around the world.

Esther Duflo received a Maitrise (1994) from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, an M.A. (1995) from the Department and Laboratory of Applied and Theoretical Economics at ENS, and a Ph.D. (1999) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined the Department of Economics at M.I.T. as an assistant professor in 1999. Since 2005, she has been the Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics and a director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at M.I.T. Duflo is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and director of the development economics program at the Center for Economic Policy Research.

MIT economist Esther Duflo PhD ‘99, whose influential research has prompted new ways of fighting poverty around the globe, was named winner today of the John Bates Clark medal. Duflo is the second woman to receive the award, which ranks below only the Nobel Prize in prestige within the economics profession and is considered a reliable indicator of future Nobel consideration (about 40 percent of past recipients have won a Nobel).

Duflo, a 37-year-old native of France, is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and a director of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Her work uses randomized field experiments to identify highly specific programs that can alleviate poverty, ranging from low-cost medical treatments to innovative education programs.

Duflo, who officially found out about the medal via a phone call earlier today, says she regards the medal as “one for the team,” meaning the many researchers who have contributed to the renewal of development economics. “This is a great honor,” Duflo told MIT News. “Not only for me, but my colleagues and MIT. Development economics has changed radically over the last 10 years, and this is recognition of the work many people are doing.”

The American Economic Association, which gives the Clark medal to the top economist under age 40, said Duflo had distinguished herself through “definitive contributions” in the field of development economics. “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,” the association said in a statement.

Fighting poverty

In 2003, Duflo co-founded J-PAL along with one of her mentors and frequent collaborators, Abhijit Banerjee, MIT’s Ford International Professor of Economics, as well as economist Sendhil Mullainathan, now of Harvard. While Duflo’s own work has often focused on fieldwork in India and Kenya, J-PAL supports research in dozens of countries, and aims to work with both governments and nongovernmental organizations to implement anti-poverty programs.

“The field has exploded over the last few years,” says Duflo. Her receipt of the Clark medal, she adds, “is a sign that the field is so alive. Many more young people are now working in development economics, and hopefully that will continue.”

In one notable study, Duflo, together with Banerjee and J-PAL’s executive director, Rachel Glennerster, found that 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. Duflo, Harvard economist Michael Kremer, and economist Jonathan Robinson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, have run repeated experiments in Kenya that help farmers use fertilizer in a more efficient fashion.

Much of Duflo’s work has analyzed educational practices. After an experiment involving more than 120 schools in Kenya, Duflo, Kremer, and Pascaline Dupas of UCLA concluded that 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). In India, Duflo, Stephen Ryan of MIT and Rema Hanna of Harvard discovered that instructor attendance at rural, one-teacher schools improved notably when verified by date-stamped cameras and linked to salary; student performance improved as a result.

While these research projects typically take place on small scales at first, J-PAL works to broaden the scope of successful experiments. After Kremer and economist Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley showed that giving children medicine to free them of intestinal worms markedly helps school attendance, J-PAL helped start Deworm the World, a nonprofit organization that helped the Kenyan government treat 3.6 million children in 2009.

“We are extremely happy for Esther and MIT,” said Ricardo Caballero, chair of the Department of Economics and the Ford International Professor of Economics, Macroeconomics and International Finance. “She has built one of the most successful academic careers I can recall in recent times while making a huge difference for the poor around the world. This award is the latest recognition to her superb work but surely not the last one. What a collection she is putting together.”

A series of honors

The Clark medal is one of several prizes Duflo has been awarded recently. In 2009, she received a MacArthur Fellowship; was the first recipient of the Calvó Armengol International Prize from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics; became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and delivered a lecture series at the College de France in Paris, having been named that institution's first holder of its "Knowledge Against Poverty" chair. J-PAL claimed a significant new international prize in January 2009, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Development Cooperation.

MIT economist Paul Samuelson was given the first Clark medal, in 1947, while MIT graduate Emmanuel Saez PhD ’99 was awarded last year’s prize. The most recent MIT faculty member to win the medal, before Duflo, was Daron Acemoglu, now MIT’s Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics, in 2005. Prior to 2010, the Clark medal had only been awarded in odd-numbered years; now it is given annually.

Past MIT faculty members who have won the Clark medal include Samuelson, Robert Solow (who won it in 1961), Jerry Hausman (1985), Paul Krugman (1991) and Acemoglu. MIT alumni who have won the award include Lawrence Klein PhD ’44 (1959), Joseph Stiglitz PhD ’67 (1979), Lawrence H. Summers ’75 (1993), Steven Levitt PhD ’94 (2003) and Saez.

    麻省理工学院经济系的发展经济学家杜芙洛（ Esther Duflo ）获全球著名的经济学奖——克拉克奖。该奖是奖给40岁以下的年轻经济学家，其获奖的难度比诺贝尔奖还难，也是未来诺奖的风向标。杜芙洛是法国人，今年37岁，毕业于MIT，毕业后就打破美国大学不留本校博士生的惯例，留在本校经济系。在近十年的研究中，她与合作者和导师MIT的印度人本纳吉和哈佛的克莱默改写了发展经济学，彻底地将发展经济学从刘易斯、罗申斯坦-罗丹的宏大叙事结构中解放了出来，他们的研究更关注发展中国家穷人的微观行为，而采用的方法更强调大规模的随机田野实验（randomized field experiments ）来评估各种消除贫穷的政策，这些政策包括低成本的医疗计划到乡村教育问题。

    杜芙洛、本纳吉（Abhijit Banerjee）和克莱默（ Michael Kremer）主要是以MIT的“贫穷行动实验室”（ Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab ）为基地，该实验室是杜芙洛、本纳吉和哈佛的印度裔教授Sendhil Mullainathan成立的，其研究地主要在印度和肯尼亚，目的在于与政府和非政府组织一道实施反贫穷计划。围绕“贫苦行动实验室”，集合了一大批年轻的发展经济学家，集中在发展中国家的微观经济问题，研究方法主要采用大规模田野实验。世界银行和其他基金组织都对他们的研究给予高度关注和支持。

    在一些著名的研究中，杜芙洛发现，在北印度，当给采取措施奖励每家一袋小扁豆后，家庭成员注射疫苗率从5%上升到40%；杜芙洛还和克莱默等人在肯尼亚的研究中还进行重复性实验，帮助当地农民更有效地使用化肥。他们的研究还贫苦地区的教育实践中，他们在肯尼亚的实验中发现，小学按学生表现分成小班将有助于孩子的教育。总之，杜芙洛等人的研究方法的确改变了发展经济学的研究走向，也引发了发展经济学新的、爆炸性研究热潮。

    在哈佛时，我曾经听过杜芙洛的《发展经济学》课程，当时是哈佛与MIT合开，本纳吉、杜芙洛和克莱默三人合讲一门课。杜芙洛主要讲具体的案例和数据处理方法，特别是他们大力推崇的随机田野实验。她的口音很难懂，语速快、法语口音很重，而且讲课很随便，双手抱在胸前，一边扯袖口，一边讲，有时讲一讲的，就坐在讲台上了。她穿着低腰的牛仔裤，上衣也很短，所以动作大时，肚腹都会露出。这也许是我在国外看见最随便的讲课方式。有种说法是，讲话速度极快的人是绝顶聪明的。估计是。课程结束后，克莱默请大家到他家里去开party，当时来了很多人，包括MIT和哈佛的博士生和学者。克莱默和他巨瘦高的太太一边招呼着大家，而他还不会走路的孩子却在地板上到处爬，我真的很担心挤满整个公寓的大人会踩着小孩。可谁也不在乎。本纳吉是一个非常漂亮、聪明的印度人，我非常强烈地感到他身上对中国人的不屑和傲慢。为什么会这样，不得其解。后来我算了一下，他出生在1962，估计父辈和亲戚经历了当时短暂的中印冲突。会有影响吗？

    那晚，当时在哈佛的郭凯对我讲，现在撑起发展经济学天空的三大牛人都聚集在这里，他们将决定未来的发展经济学的道路。此话不假。

    与此相比，国内的发展经济学无论是研究和教材都异常陈旧了。我们仍囿于上个世纪七十年代以前的理论和方法。这就是差距。

作者：dengxiang，来源：dengxiang博客

牛人，前途无量啊

找几篇牛人多的paper看看~