Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Reduction and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is also co-founder and co-director of J-PAL, an anti-poverty action laboratory. In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with a view to helping design and evaluate social policies and programs. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, the environment and governance.

Esther Duflo graduated in history and economics from the École normale supérieure in Paris. D. in Economics from MIT in 1999.

Duflo has received numerous academic awards and honors, including in 2019 the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in honor of Alfred Nobel (jointly with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer), the Princess of Asturias Prize for Social Science (2015), the A.SK Social Science Award (2015), the Infosys Award (2014), the David N. Kershaw Award (2011), the John Bates Clark Medal (2010) and a MacArthur " Genius Grant " (2009). With Abhijit Banerjee, she wrote Rethinking Poverty, which in 2011 won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs " Business Book of the Year" award , and has been translated into seventeen languages. Together, they published Économie utile pour des temps difficiles in 2020 .

Esther Duflo is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the British Academy.