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Conversations with Tyler

Esther Duflo on Management, Growth, and Research in Action

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2019

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Want to support future conversations? Visit conversationswithtyler.com/donate.

Esther Duflo's advice to students? Spend time in the field. "It's only through this exposure that you can learn how wrong most of your intuitions are and preconceptions are," she explains. For Duflo, it was time spent in the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse. While there she saw how Jeff Sachs used the tools of economics to advise policymakers on matters of crucial importance. To her it seemed like the best job in the world—and she began to pursue it in earnest. Now it is she who is advising governments on how best to reduce poverty, having co-founded one of the leading policy research centers in the world. That work, together with that of frequent collaborators Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, has now been honored with the Nobel Prize. 

She joined Tyler to discuss that work, including how coaching increases the effectiveness of cash transfers, why she cautions against falling in love with growth rates, what France gets right about child-rearing, the management philosophy behind her success building J-PAL, how she briefly became the face of an anti-Soviet revolution, the under-looked reasons behind the decline of geographic mobility in the United States, what rock climbing can teach us about being a good empirical economist, her daily musical move from Bach to Bob Dylan, and more. 

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded November 12th, 2019

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0:00.0

Hi everyone, this is Tyler of Conversations with Tyler.

0:07.0

I hope you've enjoyed listening to and learning from this year's conversations as much as I

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have.

0:13.0

For me, it's the single most rewarding and instructive thing I do.

0:16.8

This year, some of my absolute favorites have been, for instance, Neil Stevenson, talking

0:22.2

about science fiction, the future, and innovation, Masha Gesson, UnRussia and Putin, and the history

0:28.2

of communism.

0:29.5

Russ Roberts on Market Economics, Karl Knoeskard on Norway, Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian Art,

0:37.8

Emily Wilson on the Ancient Greeks, the Classics, and Homer's Odyssey.

0:43.0

If you've benefited from this podcast and enjoyed it, please consider making a financial

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contribution before the end of the year at ConversationsWithTyler.com slash donate.

0:55.8

All donations will go to the production of the show, including first, new conversations

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every other week, and note that unlike most other podcasts, we often have to pay to travel

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to our guests, and we have never done a remote interview.

1:09.5

Second, live shows in Arlington, Virginia, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and

1:16.3

more low cows to come.

1:17.9

Third, full readable transcripts of every episode enhanced with helpful links.

1:23.5

For me, doing ConversationsWithTyler is about learning from other people and teaching

1:29.0

other people how to learn, and that's what I try to do in each episode, is to show how

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listening and asking good questions produces knowledge, and how that can help make the

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world a wiser place.

1:42.0

So if you believe in the power of learning through listening and reading as I do, please

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