Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer win Nobel Prize for Economics

Nobel Economics Prize for 2019 has been awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Indian-origin Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Esther Duflo are with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Kremer is with Harvard University.

Duflo, 47, is a French-American economist who is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation. In two decades, the three have demonstrated a new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, said the academy that confers the prize in release.

The Nobel prize committee said the research conducted by the trio has considerably improved "our ability to fight global poverty."

It added that 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 – for example, the most effective interventions for improving educational outcomes or child health. 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.

Nobel Prize Economics

Duflo and Banerjee have worked with the poor in dozens of countries spanning five continents, trying to understand the specific problems that come with poverty and to find proven solutions. They have tried to find answers to questions like these: :

Why the poor need to borrow in order to save?

Why they miss out on free life-saving immunizations but pay for drugs that they do not need?

Why they start many businesses but do not grow any of them?

The trio will receive the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel.