Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."
"The research conducted by this year's laureates has 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," said the Nobel committee in a statement.
Abhijit, 58, was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 1988. Duflo, 46, is the second woman to win the economics prize after Elinor Ostrom got it in 2009, and is also the youngest ever to receive the economics award. She is married to Abhijit. Abhijit is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to his profile on the MIT website.
Abhijit founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in 2003, along with Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan. J-PAL is a global research centre based in Massachusetts. Abhijit is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society and winner of the Infosys prize. His articles on economics often appear in major news publications across the world. Abhijit is the author of four books that includes Poor Economics, for which he won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011. The book has been translated into more than 17 languages.
Both Abhijit and Esther work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Kremer is at Harvard University. Duflo is also the Editor of the American Economic Review, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Kremer, 54, is a development economist, who is currently the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University.
Wishes started pouring in with the news of Abhijit winning the prize. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that due to the studies of Abhijit, Duflo and Kremer more than five million Indian children have benefited from effective programmes of remedial tutoring in schools. The Nobel prize in economics prize includes 9 million-kronor (USD 918,000) cash, a gold medal and a diploma. The winners will equally share the prize money.
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