Who are Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo?
And how an inadequate understanding of poverty had blighted the battle against it. On Monday, Abhijit Banerjee, 58, and Esther Duflo, 46, won the Nobel Prize in Economics, along with economist Michael Kremer, for their “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.
How many experiments have Dr Banerjee and Dr Duflo done?
Mr Banerjee says he and Ms Duflo have been involved in about “70 to 80 experiments” in any number of countries.
What did Abhijit Banerjee find when he visited Kolkata?
At 24, when she finally visited the city as a graduate student at MIT, she instead found trees and empty pavements and little signs of the misery depicted in the comic book. At six, Abhijit Banerjee knew exactly where the poor lived – little shanties behind his home in Kolkata.
How did Esther Duflo describe Kolkata?
Esther Duflo was six when she read in a comic book on Mother Teresa that described Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) as an overcrowded city where each resident lived on a 10 sq ft space.
Who is Rashi Banerjee’s Nobel Prize-winning Economics winner Rashi Duflo?
Ms Duflo is the second woman to be awarded a Nobel in economics. The Indian-born Mr Banerjee and Paris-born Ms Duflo grew up in completely different worlds.
What is Duflo and Banerjee’s contribution to development economics?
The work of Duflo and Banerjee, which has long been intertwined with Kremer’s, has been highly innovative in the area of development economics, emphasizing the use of field experiments in research in order to realize the benefits of laboratory-style randomized, controlled trials.
What is Esther Duflo doing now?
Aside from a leave at Princeton University, she has continued to work at MIT. Esther Duflo married her research colleague, Abhijit Banerjee, with whom she also shared the Prize in Economic Sciences.