Esther Duflo — Entrepreneur Story

Story map

Read this like a founder: problem, early product, first customers, then the moments that changed everything.

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This story is still being drafted. Check back soon.

Experiments, pivots, and surprises. Look for what changed their thinking.

1
Question
What happened: Researchers turn a broad claim such as 'this programme helps' into outcomes that can be observed and compared.
Lesson: A precise question makes it easier to discover when an appealing idea is wrong.
2
Test
What happened: Field experiments compare different approaches in real settings rather than relying only on intuition.
Lesson: Evidence can reveal how people respond after the first intended effect.
3
Interpretation
What happened: Researchers examine whether a result is large, lasting and likely to apply in other settings.
Lesson: Good evidence still needs careful interpretation before it becomes policy.

Every product creates value, and every decision has a trade-off. Good founders stay honest about both.

+The experimental approach has improved the evidence available for decisions about education, health and other anti-poverty programmes.
+J-PAL makes summaries of many evaluations available to policymakers and the public.

±Randomised evaluations cannot answer every moral, political or system-level question.
±The well-known Kenya bed-net pricing study linked from this lesson was conducted by J-PAL affiliates Jessica Cohen and Pascaline Dupas; it should not be attributed to Duflo personally.

If you had to explain this story to a friend, what would you want them to remember?

Ask what people are likely to do after the first effect of a decision.
Use evidence to challenge a plausible story rather than only to confirm it.
Check who conducted a study before attaching a famous person's name to its findings.

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