Indian-Origin Economist Abhijit Banerjee Wins Nobel Prize
Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize, along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, for their “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” Banerjee and Duflo, a French-American, have been married for four years. They are the first couple to win a Nobel Prize in Economics, and the sixth Nobel-winning couple so far.
Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Duflo are both professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And, Michael Kremer is a professor at Harvard University. Talking about the trio’s contribution to the field of economics, the statement released by the Swedish academy read, “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.”
“This year’s Laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty. In brief, it involves dividing this issue into smaller, more manageable, questions. They have shown that these smaller, more precise, questions are often best answered via carefully designed experiments among the people who are most affected,” it added.
As soon as the award was announced they winners received congratulatory messages from all over the world. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also posted a congratulatory message for Banerjee on Twitter. Finance Minister of India Nirmala Sitharaman, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also congratulated the winners.
Banerjee, 58, was born in Mumbai, India. He received an education at the University of Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University in India. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University in 1988. Apart from MIT, he has also taught at Harvard University and Princeton University. His work has always focussed on development economics. He co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab in 2003, along with Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan.
