Research About Anti-poverty Thoughts Of Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo is the winner of the 2010 John Bates Clark medal.Her main research field is development economics.Through using the method of field experiment,she has made extraordinary contributions to the change from macro research to micro empirical research in development economics.Her researches about poverty reduction policies and setting up Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab(J-PAL)are especially remarkable.But both China and abroad are lack of researches about anti-poverty thoughts of Esther Duflo.This paper chose anti-poverty thoughts of Esther Duflo as the research subject,and combining with her newest researches,this article explored her contributions to the field of anti-poverty.This paper is divided into five parts.The first part discusses the topic background,research significance,reviews about domestic and foreign literatures,research content,innovation and introduction of Esther Duflo.The second part introduces the research methods of Esther Duflo,and her methods represent the new development of development economics in the resent ten years,including using of micro empirical method and field experiment.The third part introduces the descriptions of living condition of the poor based on the micro family surveys of Esther Duflo in developing countries.The fourth part discusses Esther Duflo’s researches about reasons of poverty and how to reduce poverty,including hunger,health,education,saving and gender inequality.At the last part,the thesis evaluates anti-poverty thoughts of Esther Duflo,including her methods and theoretical contribution,as well as the limitation of her thoughts,and exploring the inspiration of her anti-poverty thoughts for targeted poverty alleviation in our country.Esther Duflo uses field experiment to do micro empirical research,and prompts field experiment becoming an important tool in development economics.But the field experiment also has some limitations,such as ethical dilemmas,endogenous,and lack of generality.Her research conclusions need to be repeated to verify whether elsewhere will get the same results.But it is undeniable that her method and focusing special problems can give us inspiration,helping us to better understand the special problems in the field of poverty.This is from the traditional ’blackboard economics’to the real economic life.Researching on reasons and suggestions of poverty,Esther Duflo especially emphasizes information and psychological factors.Both her research methods and theories of poverty reduction can provide some enlightenment for targeted poverty alleviation in our country,including through field experiment method for getting scientific evidences about effectiveness of policies,and focusing on information transfer and mental care towards the poor.