Esther Duflo, the youngest to win a Nobel in economics and only the second woman, is rethinking solutions to poverty problems. Film director Satyajit Ray and actor Marlon Brando walked through the streets of Kolkata in 1967. Ray pushed through the assemblage of beggars and street kids. Brando, appalled, called him on it before Ray, according to Brando’s memoir, put his hand on Brando’s shoulder and said, “You can’t help them all.” The attitude largely frames how the rest of the world, the haves, thinks about the other portion, the have-nots. Unless your name is Esther Duflo. The 46-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, along with husband Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, decided if the devil was in the details, then maybe that was a good place to start looking. On Monday, it netted them the Nobel Prize in economics. Where politicians have traditionally gone macro — everything from government cheese to widely maligned welfare programs — Duflo and crew went micro. And globally so. | 