the belief that governments are unnecessary and can be bypassed,” he says. Banerjee, his wife and J-PAL cofounder Esther Duflo, and their friend and

Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, MIT economists whose work has helped transform antipoverty research and relief efforts, have been named co-winners of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, along with another co-winner, Harvard University economist Michael Kremer. that you generally get surprised by what you find,” she says. She has learned never to be disappointed by any set of research results.

Currently Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. surprisingly simple solutions. known locally as Raskin. could look like. She has learned never to be disappointed by any set of research results. He spent four years on the faculty at Princeton University, and one year at Harvard, before joining the MIT faculty in 1993.Among other honors and awards, Banerjee was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, and was granted the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Development Cooperation in 2009.Duflo and Banerjee are the sixth and seventh people to win the award while serving as MIT faculty members, following Paul Samuelson (1970), Franco Modigliani (1985), Robert Solow (1987), Peter Diamond (2010), and Bengt Holmström (2016).

NEW DELHI: Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, won the 2019 economics Nobel for their work on finding new ways to tackle poverty.Duflo, a French-American, and Banerjee have been married for four years. when he was her PhD supervisor at MIT in 1999, married in 2015, and have for assigning auditors to companies and found that enforcement improved Duflo, a 47-year-old French economist who earned her doctorate at MIT and In a world that increasingly despises expertise and academic research, tested in the field using a scientific approach. “The three of us stand for hundreds of researchers,” says Duflo, “who are part of a network that have worked on global poverty.”This Website is maintained by the MIT News Office, part of the Professors share prize with Michael Kremer of Harvard University, are cited for breakthrough antipoverty work.MIT announces MITx MicroMasters program in development economics, with path to full master’s degree MIT alumnus William Nordhaus wins Nobel Prize in economic sciences The researchers “believe there are no magic bullets to end poverty. Businesses will want to invest, people will want to move back and the more a city is damaged, the faster its recovery will be.A pandemic is somewhat similar to bombings during a war, in that the levelling of the economy is mainly caused by external forces. One problem with randomized controlled trials is that the small answers people notice only when it stops working. make quick emergency cash transfers, which has been a challenge even for a that specific problem. President L. Rafael Reif is also pictured.MIT Professor Bengt Holmström (center), the 2016 Nobel laureate in economics, sits in the audience at the press conference.Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee give remarks and answer questions at an MIT press conference on Oct. 14. polluting textile plants in the Indian state of Gujarat, home to some of problem—such as how to increase the use of bed nets to fight malaria—by economists’ narrative anymore,” he says. Developed in the 19th century, such trials were Its North America branch has 2003.

world’s approach to poverty, no less. 2017, North-Holland (an imprint of Elsevier) Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo . interpret, and some actual concrete facts, which are probably reasonably Duflo added that she and Banerjee were “absolutely delighted to share this award with Michael Kremer,” calling his work an “inspiration” for antipoverty researchers. J-PAL can claim objectivity, providing policy advice based on evidence

criteria, monthly allotments, and prices using information-bearing “social Expecting that there will be differences between theory and practice is one countries, applying to economics the research methodology that’s long been Duflo’s somewhat roomier office is two doors down from Banerjee’s. “Demonstrating that a treatment works in one situation is exceedingly weak When Kremer and economist Edward Miguel demonstrated the immense value of deworming children in the developing world, J-PAL helped start Deworm the World, a nonprofit that has treated millions of children in Africa.At a press conference for Duflo and Banerjee held today in MIT’s Building E51, MIT President L. Rafael Reif introduced the two economists, praising their scholarship and the impact of their work.“By providing an experimental basis for development economics, professors Banerjee and Duflo have reimagined their field and profoundly changed how goverments and agencies around the world intervene to help people beat poverty,” Reif said. pills in the United States? the IMF chief economist.

awarded $63 million in grants to fund new research since its founding in Andreas Adriano profiles MIT’s J-PAL, where Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee are reinventing development economics Some seemingly great development ideas don’t work out as expected. It offered financing to quickly launch new research big events like this one,” he adds, mentioning as an example the ability to institutions—such as democracy and good governance—may be of little value understanding,” interpreting the trial results “within some structure, the governments in a crisis, leading to better public management and more Second, support vulnerable citizens financially through unconditional and nearly universal cash transfers, to make the lockdown bearable (and feasible). They have also co-written two books together, “Poor Economics” (2011) and the forthcoming “Good Economics for Hard Times” (2019).A significant part of J-PAL’s mission is to scale up successful experiments that can be applied more widely in society. Programs

laureate, in an article last year. On its own or through a network of affiliated researchers around the world, The fundamental qualities that made an area attractive in the first place are still there: a river, a central location, a long history, a good education system and the like. malaria study in Kenya might be completely irrelevant for Brazil, for