Nobel Economics Prize 2019: Abhijit Banerjee, wife Duflo, & Kremer win

The Nobel prize in Economic Sciences for the year 2019 has been awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer 'for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty'. The Swedish Academy announced the last set of this year’s Nobel prize which included an Indian-American.

The Swedish Academy said that the winners have contributed towards the ability to fight global poverty with their work. “In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research,” said the Academy. Over 700 million people still subsist on extremely low incomes. Every year, five million children still die before their fifth birthday, often from diseases that could be prevented or cured with relatively cheap and simple treatments,” it added.

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Breakthrough for an Indian-American

Abhijit Banerjee, born 1961 in Mumbai, is a PhD holder from Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. Banerjee is a Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“This year’s Laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty,” said the Academy in a statement.

Kremer, along with his colleagues, used field experiments to test a range of interventions that could improve school results in western Kenya.

“Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, often with Michael Kremer, soon performed similar studies of other issues and in other countries. Their experimental research methods now entirely dominate development economics,” read the release.

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Dulfo and Kremer

Esther Duflo, born 1972 in Paris, is an Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and Michael Kremer, born in 1964, is a Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University, Cambridge.

According to the Swedish Academy, more than five million Indian children have benefitted from effective programmes of remedial tutoring in schools, which was a direct result of one of their studies. "Another example is the heavy subsidies for preventive healthcare that have been introduced in many countries," said the Academy. The prize amount of 9 million Swedish krona will be shared equally between the Nobel Laureates.

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