Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, Prof. Esther Duflo and Prof. Bernardo Silveira join our Faculty
As of 1 July 2026, we welcome Abhijit Banerjee as Lemann Foundation Professor in Economics, Esther Duflo as Lemann Foundation Professor in Economics and Bernardo Silveira as Professor of Applied Microeconomics and at the Department of Economics.
Prior to joining UZH, Prof. Abhijit Banerjee was Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Banerjee is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society.
Until recently, Prof. Esther Duflo was the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She also holds the Poverty and Public Policy chair at the Collège de France and serves as president of the Paris School of Economics. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society.
Duflo and Banerjee's research brings together development economics, behavioral economics and public policy, with a focus on finding effective ways to reduce global poverty. They pioneered the use of randomized controlled trials in economics and co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in 2003 to apply this approach around the world. Their work explores topics such as microfinance, household financial decision-making and the design of health and education programs in low-income countries. It also examines the psychological and economic factors that influence the decisions people make in situations of poverty. In 2019, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.
Prof. Bernardo Silveira studied at the Pontificia Universidade de Católico do Rio de Janeiro. After receiving his PhD in 2013 from New York University, he served as an assistant professor at Washington University until 2019, with a break in 2015-2016 to serve as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2020, Prof. Silveira has been an assistant professor at the University of California. He also served as a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Massachusetts.
His research lies at the intersection of industrial organization, law and economics, and political economy, with a particular focus on how institutions shape strategic behaviour. His work examines bargaining and dispute resolution, the design and effectiveness of regulation and law enforcement, and the structural econometrics of incomplete-information models.
Welcome to the Faculty!
