Banerjee, 2 Others Get Economics Nobel Prize for Study on Poverty

The Nobel prize in economics has been awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.

(Photo: Twitter)

Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday, 14 October "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the prize on Monday.

"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, PTI reported.

Officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the award wasn’t created by the prize founder, but is considered to be part of the Nobel stable of awards.

It was created by Riksbanken, the Swedish central bank, in 1968, and the first winner was selected a year later. With the glory comes a 9 million-kronor ($918,000) cash award, a gold medal and a diploma.

Who Are the Winners?

Banerjee and Duflo are both at Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Kremer is at Harvard University.

Duflo is only the second woman to win the economics prize, Associated Press reported. She is also the youngest ever to receive the economics award, according to the report.

Duflo said that getting the prize "incredibly humbling”, according to Associated Press.

Banerjee, 58, was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 1988, PTI reported.

He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to his profile on the MIT website.

In 2003, Banerjee founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, and he remains one of the lab's directors, according to PTI.

He also served on the UN Secretary-General's High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

(With inputs from Associated Press and PTI.)