Nobel Prize in Economics Won by Trio for Work on Easing Poverty

• 10.14.2019, 18:43
•  World

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have been jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, FT reports.

Mr Banerjee and Ms Duflo — a couple both at work and in their private life — are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Mr Kremer is a professor at Harvard University.

Ms Duflo, 46, becomes only the second woman to be awarded an economics Nobel, after the US economist Elinor Ostrom who won the prize in 2009 for her work on human co-operation. She is also the youngest-ever laureate in economics: the previous record was held by Kenneth Arrow, who was 51 when he was awarded the prize in 1972.

The three, who often collaborate in their research, were awarded the prize — officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel — for developing new, experimental research methods to identify the most effective policy interventions to fight poverty through field studies.

"Our goal is to make sure the fight against poverty is based on scientific evidence," Ms Duflo told a press conference. "Often the poor get reduced to caricatures and even those [who] try to help them do not understand the deep roots of what is making them poor . . . We try to address problems as scientifically as possible."