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Duflo Receives John Bates Clark Medal
NBER Research Associate Esther Duflo is the recipient of the American Economics Associations John Bates Clark Medal for 2010. This now annual award is presented to the economist under the age of 40 who has made the most substantial contribution to economic thought and knowledge. The prize citation highlights Esther's work in development economics. It notes in particular her creative analysis of a range of questions, including education policy, infrastructure development, and electoral reform, using both evidence from randomized field experiments and data from non-experimental settings. Esther is a faculty member at MIT, one of the directors of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, and a Research Associate in the NBER's Aging, Children's, and Education Programs. She joined the NBER as a Faculty Research Fellow in 1999.
Other current NBER Research Associates who have received the Clark Medal include Daniel McFadden, Martin Feldstein, Joseph Stiglitz, James Heckman, Jerry Hausman, Sanford Grossman, Paul Krugman, David Card, Kevin Murphy, Andrei Shleifer, Steven Levitt, Daron Acemoglu, Susan Athey, and Emmanuel Saez. Gary Becker, who was an NBER affiliate from 1957 until 1979, and Lawrence Summers, who is currently a Research Associate on leave, also won the Clark Medal, as did the late Milton Friedman and Zvi Griliches, both of whom were NBER affiliates for substantial parts of their careers.
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NBER Closes Palo Alto Office
In March 2010, the NBER closed its Palo Alto office after 36 years of operation. The office, which opened in June 1974, was housed in a leased building on the Stanford University campus. Victor Fuchs, of NBER and Stanford University, and Sherman Maisel, of NBER and the University of California at Berkeley, were the inaugural co-directors of "NBER-West." Their leadership launched a long tradition of conferences, seminars, and academic visitors to this facility. John Shoven of NBER and Stanford University has recently been the director of the Palo Alto office and Rosannah Reeves, who managed the office from 1978 until it closed this year, was a great contributor to its success. In the last decade, the number of researchers who spent substantial amounts of time in the NBER's Palo Alto office had declined. Even without a dedicated facility, the NBER expects to continue its practice of holding various research meetings in West Coast locations.
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