Stockholm: The 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Indian-origin MIT professor Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”, it was announced on Monday.
“This year’s laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty,” the jury said.
Banerjee was born in 1961 in Mumbai. He is a Ph.D. from Harvard University and a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an official statement said here.
Banerjee, in 2003, founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with Duflo and Sendhil, and he remains one of the lab’s directors.
The three found efficient ways of combatting poverty by breaking down difficult issues into smaller, more manageable questions, which can then be answered through field experiments, the jury said.
Duflo, born in 1972, is only the second woman and the youngest person to be awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences in its 50-year existence, following Elinor Ostrom in 2009.