J-Pal’s Duflo to receive US advisory post

President Barack Obama has announced his intention to appoint MIT Professor Esther Duflo to the President’s Global Development Council. Professor Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, and a founder and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA.
Established by executive order in September 2010 and administered by the US Agency for International Development, the President’s Global Development Council is being designed to advise the administration on US global development policies and practices, to support new and existing public-private partnerships, and to increase awareness and action in support of development by soliciting public input on current and emerging issues in the field of global development.
On Dec. 21, Obama announced his intent to appoint two chairs and eight members to the council from a variety of sectors outside the federal government.
In making the announcement, President Obama said, “These dedicated and accomplished individuals will be valued additions to my administration as we tackle the important challenges facing America. I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”
Highlighting the announcement as a major breakthrough, Fady Jameel, President of Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives International (ALJCI) stated “It is a matter of great esteem for us that Professor Duflo’s dedication and deliberations have received recognition through the support of ALJCI. J-PAL has worked hard to forge an alliance between economic necessity, creativity and policy-making. This partnership has produced astounding results in finding out what really works in reducing poverty.”
Professor Duflo is an internationally renowned economist whose research has helped change the way governments and aid organizations address global poverty. Her work applying randomized trials to determine which social policies actually work best to relieve poverty has led to numerous accolades. Most recently she was named one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” for 2012 by Foreign Policy magazine.
Other awards include the John Bates Clark Medal (2010), a MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant” (2009), and the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award (2011), which she won for co-authoring “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty” (with Abhijit V. Banerjee, Ford International Professor of Economics at MIT). Professor Duflo is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the first holder of the “Knowledge Against Poverty” chair at the College de France in Paris.
In addition to her MIT research, Professor Duflo is Director of the Development Economics program at the Center for Economic Policy Research and serves as Editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. She holds a doctorate degree in Economics from MIT in 1999. She received her undergraduate degree from L’Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and a graduation degree from DELTA, which has since been incorporated into the Paris School of Economics.