On Tuesday, February 16, USAID's Microenterprise Development office held its 39th  Microfinance Innovations After Hours Seminar on the topic of "Evaluating the Impact of Microfinance." During the event, which was moderated by Don Sillers of USAID, Professor Esther Duflo discussed the research she and her colleagues conducted on the impacts of microcredit on communities in Hyderabad, India. The project was conducted in coordination with Spandanda, a large MFI in South India, and measured the take up of microcredit, the expected impacts and the impact results. Professor Duflo explained the rationale behind the research project and why a randomized evaluation was needed to accurately measure impact. The results of the study, which showed - in Professor Duflo's words - that "microcredit may neither be the life changing experience that some have described, not the new usury" have been widely cited and spurred a lively question and answer period.  

>> Download the PowerPoint

>> Click here to watch the Screencast

>>Speaker Biography:

Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at MIT and a founder and director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research network specializing in randomized evaluations of social programs, which won the BBVA Foundation "Frontier of Knowledge" award in the development cooperation category. Duflo is an NBER Research Associate, serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and is Director of the Center of Economic Policy Research's development economics program. Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behavior, education, access to finance, health and policy evaluation.

Duflo completed her undergraduate studies at L'Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1994, received a master's degree from DELTA in Paris in 1995, and completed a PhD in Economics at MIT in 1999. Upon completing her MIT PhD she was appointed assistant professor of economics at MIT, and has been at MIT ever since, aside from being on leave to Princeton University in 2001-2002. 

Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes including a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the American Economic Association's Elaine Bennett Prize for Research (2003), the  "Best French Young Economist Prize" (Le Monde/Cercle des economistes, 2005), the Médaille de Bronze (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 2005), and the Prix Luc Durand-Reville (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 2008). In 2008-2009 she was the inaugural holder of the international chair "Knowledge Against Poverty" at the College de France.