Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer today. The trio was awarded 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.

In a press release, the committee said the research conducted by the three laureates “considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research.”

The committee also said in a tweet, “This year’s laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty. It divides this issue into smaller, more manageable questions – for example, the most effective interventions for improving child health.”

“Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, often with Michael Kremer, soon performed similar studies of other issues and in other countries, including India. Their experimental research methods now entirely dominate development economics,” said the Nobel Prize Committee in another tweet.

Banerjee was born in 1961 in Mumbai and got married to Duflo in 2015. He studied at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Harvard University. He is currently working as the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).