Esther Duflo, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics,  will deliver the 2022 PPE Distinguished Public Lecture at Virginia Tech.

Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

At Virginia Tech, Duflo will speak about her coauthored book, Good Economics for Hard Times, which addresses some of the thorniest social and political problems of our time. The virtual lecture will take place on February 16 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

All faculty, students, and members of the public are welcome to attend this lecture. Advance registration is required and can be accessed through the Kellogg Center website.

She is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. Duflo is the director of the development economics program at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Duflo’s research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including education, access to finance, health, and policy evaluation – taking economics out of the lab to discover the causes of poverty and means to eradicate it. Her book, co-authored with Abhijit Banerjee, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, was the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year.

Duflo is the editor of the American Economic Review and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She was honored as a MacArthur Fellow in 2009, received the John Bates Clark Medal as the best economist under 40 in 2010, and won jointly the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on global poverty alleviation in 2019.

Duflo is the youngest person and second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. 

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact the Virginia Tech production team (production@vt.edu) at least 10 business days before the event.