Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo is named in Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School) as one of the economists who won Nobel recognition alongside Michael Kremer and Abhijit Banerjee for randomized approaches to global poverty. The source uses that recognition to explain how Randomized Controlled Trials became central to modern Development Economics.

The episode does not make Duflo a field-story character, but her mention places the Busia work inside a wider evidence movement. That link matters because the source repeatedly asks whether field experiments lead to Evidence-Based Development Policy and local benefits, not only academic prestige.

Connections

• Michael Kremer and Abhijit Banerjee - co-recognized economists in the source’s Nobel context.
• Kenya and Busia, Kenya - field setting behind the episode’s research story.
• Development Research Ethics - ethical frame around experiments and local benefit.