Abhijit Banerjee
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019

Born:21 February 1961, Mumbai, India

Affiliation at the time of the award: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA

Prize motivation: “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”

Prize share: 1/3

Life

Abhijit Banerjee was born in Mumbai, India. Both of his parents were professors of economics. After studying at the University of Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, he earned his doctorate at Harvard University in the United States in 1998. He taught at Harvard University and Princeton University before becoming a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he now works. Abhijit Banerjee married his fellow researcher, Esther Duflo, with whom he also shared the Economics Prize.

Work

One of humanity’s most urgent issues is the reduction of global poverty, in all its forms. Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty. It involves dividing this issue into smaller, more manageable, questions. Since the mid-1990s, they have been able to test a range of interventions in different areas using field experiments, for example for improving educational outcomes or child health.