ACBES 2026 Speakers

Prof. Esther Duflo

Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences (2019)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
United States of America

Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She also previously served as Co-Chair of J-PAL’s Urban Services Initiative. In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of people living in poverty, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment, and governance. Esther is the recipient of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, awarded jointly with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

Alminas Žaldokas is an Associate Professor of Finance at the National University of Singapore. Before joining NUS, he taught corporate finance and valuation at HKUST from 2012, contributing to undergraduate, MSc, EMBA, and international joint programs, and previously lectured MBA students at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his PhD in Finance from INSEAD in 2012, after completing an MSc at the London School of Economics and a BSc at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. His research examines how corporate financial decisions interact with product market behavior, focusing on innovation, collusion, and ESG practices. His work has appeared in leading journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Accounting Research, Management Science, and others. He has received notable awards, including the Jerry S. Cohen Award (2019) and the Vladas Jurgutis Prize (2022), and serves in advisory and academic leadership roles internationally

Prof. Alminas Žaldokas

Associate Professor of Finance and Dean’s Chair
National University of Singapore, Singapore

 Co-editor, Journal of Corporate Finance
Associate Editor, Review of Corporate Finance Studies
Associate Editor, Journal of Banking and Finance

Prof. Karen Macours

Chaired Professor at the
Paris School of Economics (PSE), France
Editor-In-Chief of the
Journal of Development Economics

Karen Macours is a chaired professor at the Paris School of Economics and a senior researcher at INRAE. Her work focuses on evaluating programs that enhance human capital, agriculture, productivity, and poverty reduction in low- and middle-income countries, with strong emphasis on rigorous impact evaluation and measurement. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Development Economics, co-founder of the VDEV/CEPR/BREAD seminar, and serves on leadership boards of JPAL and BREAD. She has led CGIAR’s SPIA, previously taught at SAIS-Johns Hopkins, and holds a PhD from UC Berkeley. Her recent work covers long-term CCT impacts, agricultural learning, and development outcomes

Hans Lööf is a Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, and a leading researcher in innovation economics, firm growth, green finance, ESG, and labor economics, with strong evidence based on European firm-level data. His Web of Science Publons profile documents sustained research impact over time. Recent publications appear in International Labour Review (2024) on refugee wage premia, Journal of Forest Economics (2023) on ESG and timber markets, and Research Policy (2022) on startup boards and innovation. He has also published in Finance Research Letters, Review of International Economics, and on the war’s impact on Europe’s forest bioeconomy

Prof. Hans Lööf

Royal Institute of Technology – KTH, Sweden

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