He is the son of Jacques Drèze who founded of the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics at the Université catholique de Louvain.
He has made significant contributions to the field of development economics, focusing on various critical issues such as hunger, famine, education, gender inequality, childcare, school feeding, and employment guarantee.
[14][15] His approach to research combines conventional economic methods, as seen in his insightful articles addressing poverty in India, with methodologies commonly employed by anthropologists.
One notable example of his interdisciplinary work is his collaboration with Nicholas Stern, Peter Lanjouw, and other researchers in studying the village of Palanpur in the Moradabad District of Uttar Pradesh, India.
This involved farming a plot of land and raising animals, an experience that he recounted alongside Naresh Sharma in their article "Sharecropping in a North Indian Village" published in the Journal of Development Studies in October 1996.
[16] By combining extensive fieldwork with qualitative analysis of everyday life and poverty, complemented by quantitative research, his work stands out in the field of economics.
Another book that came out of Iraq is War and Peace in the Gulf, edited by Bela Bhatia, Jean Dreze and Kathy Kelly.