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Dr. Esther Duflo Named 2011 David N. Kershaw Award Winner
Mathematica CEO Chairs APPAM Kershaw Award Selection Committee
Contact: Amy Berridge, (609) 945-3378
Washington, D.C—September 20, 2011—The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) has selected Esther Duflo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, as the winner of the 2011 David N. Kershaw Award. The Kershaw Award and Prize comes with an honorarium of $10,000 and recognizes individuals under the age of 40 who have made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy analysis.
Paul Decker, president of Mathematica and chair of the Kershaw Award Selection Committee notes, “Esther Duflo is revolutionizing the study of international poverty interventions by gathering real data to show, with certainty, which interventions work. She’s an economist using her research to change the world. She joins the small but distinct group of past Kershaw Award winners that are having a profound influence on the field of public policy.”
Duflo has made unique contributions to the study and practice of international development and poverty alleviation. Her research focuses on microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behavior, education, access to finance, health and policy evaluation. She has made her mark as the champion of high quality evaluation research using field experiments designed to improve the lives of people in developing nations. She co-founded the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, where Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics.
Duflo is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the John Bates Clark Medal (2010) for the best economist under 40, a MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship (2009), Foreign Policy Magazine lists her as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, one of The Economist top 8 young economists in the world (and the largest vote getter), Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in April 2011, and the Harvard Kennedy School’s 2011 Thomas C. Schelling Award for an individual whose scholarly work has had a transformative impact on public policy.
The David N. Kershaw Award and Prize is named in honor of Mathematica's first president, who died of cancer in 1979 at the age of 37. The award is presented every two years at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
About APPAM: The Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving public policy and management by fostering excellence in research, analysis and education. With over 1,500 academic, practitioner, organizational and institutional members, APPAM promotes its mission through the annual Fall Research Conference, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM), the association's journal, several award programs and various activities including international and national conferences and workshops.
About Mathematica: Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan research firm, provides a full range of research and data collection services, including program evaluation and policy research, survey design and data collection, research assessment and interpretation, and program performance/data management, to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Ann Arbor, Mich., Cambridge, Mass., Chicago, Ill., Oakland, Calif., and Washington, D.C., has conducted some of the most important studies of health care, education, international, disability, family support, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs.