Esther Duflo podcast
This is from Economics in Ten podcast, season four, episode five. Duflo (with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer) won the 2019 Nobel Prize for pioneering the use of randomised controlled trials to test economic interventions aimed at reducing poverty. The episode covers what RCTs are, why they represent a methodological step forward, and what they have told us about which poverty interventions actually work. It’s a good methodological episode as well as a good development ec
Muhammad Yunus podcast
This is from Economics in Ten podcast, season four, episode four. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize (not the Economics Prize, which the episode discusses with characteristic honesty) for developing microfinance through Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The idea that small loans to poor people, particularly women, could break cycles of poverty is both accessible and interesting economically. The episode covers the theory and the evidence, including the critics who argue that high inte
Amartya Sen podcast
This is from Economics in Ten podcast, season four, episode three. Sen changed how economists measure development: away from income alone and towards a broader conception of capability and freedom, which is the intellectual foundation of the Human Development Index (HDI). His empirical finding that no substantial famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy is one of the most striking claims in development economics, and the episode gives it proper attention. One of th