Economics Nobel Goes To JNU Alumni Abhijit Banerjee, Wife Esther Duflo And Michael Kremer

Indian-origin Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have jointly won the 2019 Nobel prize in economics for their "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." The prestigious award was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday. "The research conducted by this year’s Laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research,” the Nobel committee said in a statement.

Banerjee, 58 was born in West Bengal. He educated from University of Calcutta and was also an alumni of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He also went to Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D in 1988. According to his profile on the MIT website, Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2003, Banerjee had founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with his student Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan.  Banerjee also served on the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. He started dating Duflo and had his first child with her in 2012. He later married to her in 2015.

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"Showing that it is possible for a woman to succeed and be recognised for success I hope is going to inspire many, many other women to continue working and many other men to give them the respect they deserve," said Esther Duflo during a press conference announcing her prize.

Nobel Prize In Economics And Its Brief History

The prize - officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel - wasn't created by the prize founder, but it is considered to be part of the Nobel stable of awards. The prize was created by Swedish central bank Riksbanken in 1968. However, the first winner was selected a year later in 1969.