Talking Politics 199: Esther Duflo
The Editors
In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman and Helen Thompson talk to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo about better ways to do economics. From investing in left-behind places to helping people adapt to change, they discuss good and bad economic ideas about some of the biggest challenges we face, and how it all connects back to politics. They also talk about what some of the world‘s richest countries can learn from some of the poorest.
‘There are some people who won't move and you need to make their lives honourable, manageable and pleasant where they are. That means in a sense preserving the environment, even if it happens to be a small town. Think about the small town as part of the environment. Preserving this environment is something we should just take as something we need to do, and we should find a way to do it..’ – Esther Duflo
Related pieces in the LRB:
John Broome: What‘s wrong with poverty (May 1988)
Katrina Navickas on moral economists (October 2018)
Amartya Sen: Economic Theorists, Reasoning Villagers (August 1983)