Abhijit Banerjee | |
|---|---|
 Banerjee in 2025 | |
| Born | (1961-02-21)February 21, 1961 |
| Citizenship | American |
| Occupation | Economist |
| Spouse(s) | Arundhati Tuli Banerjee (div. 2014) Esther Duflo (m. 2015) |
| Children | 3 |
| Awards | Sloan Research Fellowship (1994) Guggenheim Fellowship Infosys Prize (2009) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2019) Golden Plate from Academy of Achievement (2022) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Presidency College (BSc) Jawaharlal Nehru University (MA) Harvard University (PhD) |
| Thesis | Essays on Information Economics (1988) |
| Doctoral advisor | Eric Maskin •Andreu Mas-Colell •Jerry Green |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Economics |
| Sub-discipline | Development economics |
| Institutions | University of Zurich (2026–) MIT (1993–present) NBER (2006–present) Harvard University (1992–1993) Princeton University (1988-1992) |
| Doctoral students | Esther Duflo •Dean Karlan •João Leão •Benjamin Jones •Nancy Qian •Maitreesh Ghatak •Asim Khwaja |
| Notable ideas | Randomized controlled trial |
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (Bengali pronunciation:[oβid͡ʒitbænard͡ʒi]; born 21 February 1961)[1][2] is anIndian Americaneconomist who is currently theFord Foundation International Professor of Economics at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.[3][4] He is co-founder and co-director of theAbdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), anMIT based global research center promoting the use of scientific evidence to inform poverty alleviation strategies.[5][6] In 2019, Banerjee shared theNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences withEsther Duflo andMichael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."[1][6] He andEsther Duflo are married, and became thesixth married couple to jointly win aNobel or Nobel Memorial Prize.[7]
In addition to his academic appointments, Banerjee is a fellow of theEconometric Society,[4] a member of theNational Academy of Sciences,[3] and a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4] In 1994, he received aSloan Research Fellowship,[4] awarded annually to early career researchers with the "potential to revolutionize their fields." According toResearch Papers in Economics, Banerjee is among the most productive development economists in the world, ranking in the top 75 researchers by total research output.[8]
Banerjee was born to aBengali father and aMarathi mother inMumbai.[1][9][10][11] His father,Dipak Banerjee, was a professor of economics atPresidency College, Calcutta, and received hisPhD from theLondon School of Economics under the supervision ofRichard Lipsey.[1] His mother, Nirmala (née Patankar) Banerjee was a professor at theCentre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.[1]
Banerjee attended secondary school atSouth Point School inKolkata, where he was described as a "brilliant" but "very quiet" student.[12] During high school, he was interested in literature, history, philosophy, and mathematics, choosing to pursue his undergraduate studies in the latter at theIndian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.[1] He dropped out of the program after one week, transferring toPresidency College, then an affiliate of theUniversity of Calcutta, to study economics.
Banerjee spent three years atPresidency, receiving aBSc (Honors) in Economics in 1981.[2] He took classes with his father,Dipak Banerjee, in addition toMihir Rakshit.[1] His favorite subject waseconomic history, taught byNabhendu Sen.[1]
After completing his undergraduate studies, Banerjee pursued anMA in Economics atJawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, selecting to study there over theDelhi School of Economics because of its political life, and the latter's reputation as a stepping stone toPhD programs in theUnited States, which Banerjee had little interest in pursuing.[1] His teachers includedAnjan Mukherjee andKrishna Bharadwaj, the latter of whom taught a course on the history of economic thought.[1] While studying atJNU, Banerjee was arrested, imprisoned, and beaten atTihar Jail, in response to a protest in which studentsgheraoed the then vice chancellor of the university.[13][14] He completed his degree in 1983, and was encouraged by his parents and teachers to apply forPhD programs in economics.[1]
Banerjee applied toHarvard,Stanford, and theUniversity of California, Berkeley, attending the first of these despite no students fromJawaharlal Nehru University having previously been admitted to the university.[1] AtHarvard, his classmates includedTyler Cowen,Alan Krueger,Steven Kaplan, andNouriel Roubini.[1] He attended courses withAndreu Mas-Colell,Lawrence Summers,Kala Krishna,Oliver Hart, andSusan Collins, and briefly served as a research assistant toJeffrey Sachs.[1] His dissertation research, supervised byEric Maskin, was primarily theoretical, and examined the economics of information.[1]
Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;[15] he has taught atHarvard University andPrinceton University.[16] He has also been aGuggenheim Fellow and anAlfred P. Sloan Fellow.[3]
His work focuses ondevelopment economics. Together with Esther Duflo he has discussedfield experiments as an important methodology to discover causal relationships in economics.[17]He was elected a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.[18] In 2009, he received theInfosys Prize in the social sciences (economics) category.[19] He served on the Social Sciences jury for theInfosys Prize in 2018.In 2012, he shared theGerald Loeb Award Honorable Mention for Business Book with co-author Esther Duflo for their bookPoor Economics.[20]
In 2013, he was named by the United Nations Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon to a panel of experts tasked with updating theMillennium Development Goals after 2015 (their expiration date).[21]
In 2014, he received the Bernhard-Harms-Prize from theKiel Institute for the World Economy.[22]
In 2019, he delivered Export-Import Bank of India's 34th Commencement Day Annual Lecture on Redesigning Social Policy.[23] That same year, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, together with Esther Duflo andMichael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".[24]
In October 2025, theUniversity of Zurich announced that Banerjee and Duflo would be joining the faculty of the UZH Faculty of Business, Economics, and Informatics in July 2026, where they would co-direct the newly-established Lemann Center for Development, Education and Public Policy. The center and Banerjee and Duflo's endowed professorships were created following a 26 million franc (32.5 million USD) donation from Swiss-Brazilian billionaireJorge Paulo Lemann's Lemann Foundation. The couple would maintain part-time positions at MIT.[25]
Banerjee and his co-workers try to measure the effectiveness of actions (such as government programmes) in improving people's lives. For this, they userandomized controlled trials, similar to clinical trials in medical research.[26] For example, althoughpolio vaccination is freely available in India, many mothers were not bringing their children for the vaccination drives. Banerjee and Prof. Esther Duflo, also from MIT, tried an experiment inRajasthan, where they gave a bag of pulses to mothers who vaccinated their children. Soon, the immunization rate went up in the region. In another experiment, they found that learning outcomes improved in schools that were provided with teaching assistants to help students with special needs.[27]
Banerjee is a co-founder ofAbdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (along with economistsEsther Duflo andSendhil Mullainathan).[28] In India he serves on the academic advisory board ofPlaksha University, a science and technology university established in 2010.[29][30]
Banerjee wrote a cookbook in 2021,Cooking To Save Your Life, published by Juggernaut.
Abhijit Banerjee was married to Dr. Arundhati Tuli Banerjee, a lecturer of literature at MIT.[31][32] Abhijit and Arundhati had one son together and later divorced.[31] Their son, born in 1991, died in an accident in 2016.[33]
In 2015, Banerjee married his co-researcher, MIT professorEsther Duflo; they have two children, Noemie Banerjee (born 2012) and Milan Banerjee (born 2014).[34][35] Banerjee was a joint supervisor of Duflo's PhD in economics at MIT in 1999.[34][36] Duflo is also a professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT.[37]
In 2019, he wrote together withEsther Duflo his latest book, "Good Economics for Hard Times," where he discusses possible solutions to a series of current issues such as inequality, climate change, and globalization.[38]
Abhijit Banerjee was awarded theNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019 along with his two co-researchersEsther Duflo andMichael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".[39]
The press release from theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted: "Their experimental research methods now entirely dominatedevelopment economics."[40][41]
The Nobel committee commented:
The Nobel Prize was a major recognition for their chosen field - Development Economics, and for the use of Randomised Controlled Trials. It evoked mixed emotions in India, where his success was celebrated with nationalistic fervour while his approach and pro-poor focus were seen as a negation of India's current government's right-wing ideology as well as broader development discourse.[42]
Banerjee's achievement of the Nobel Prize was received with a cold shoulder by theright-wingBharatiya Janata Party, which is in power at the Union level in India, because he was one of the economists that were consulted byRahul Gandhi in formulating an basic-income support scheme calledNYAY, which was the main electoral promise of theIndian National Congress in the2019 Indian general election. In response to his criticism of theUnion government's handling of thecountry's economy,Commerce & Industries MinisterPiyush Goyal, while speaking on Banerjee's receiving of the Nobel Prize onTwitter, stated that Banerjee's economic theories are based ona leftist viewpoint and by voting for the BJP, the Indian masses have 'totally rejected' his thoughts.[43] BJP leader Rahul Sinha, who had served as thestate BJP president in Banerjee's native state ofWest Bengal, downplayed his achievements and allegedAnti-Indian sentiment on the part of theNobel Committee for awarding Banerjee, who marriedEsther Duflo a non-Indian person, shortly a year after divorcing his Indian wife.[44]
He was awarded theDoctor of Letters (Honoris Causa) by theUniversity of Calcutta in January 2020.[45]
Abhijit Banerjee andEsther Duflo received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement in September 2022.[46]
The 1961-born Banerjee, born to a Maharashtrian mother and Bengali father ....
Nirmala, a Marathi by birth, and her husband, the late Dipak Banerjee, were both eminent economists.
He was born in Mumbai in 1961; his mother, who is also an economist, is a Marathi.
To bring some science to the fight against poverty, the three researchers borrowed a key tool from clinical medicine: the randomized controlled trial. [They] have used trials to test interventions in education, health, agriculture, and access to credit.
The upcoming Plaksha University reimagines engineering education and prepares students for a digitally powered future.
including the Prize Lecture 8 December 2019Field experiments and the practice of economics| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
