In economics of helping the poor, Abhijit Banerjee gives clear answers

Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer together have launched a movement within development economics

The 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to three economists: Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer. The first two teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the last named at Harvard University; both campuses are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and their development economic programmes often share resources and students. They received the award for their contribution to reviving development economics, particularly through the popularisation of “randomised control trials” (RCTs) that break larger questions about policy interventions into smaller, easier to test studies.

The Nobel Committee highlighted how their “experiment-based approach has transformed development economics” over the past decades. They mentioned specifically how, as a result of one such study, “more than 5 million Indian children have benefited from programmes of remedial tutoring in schools”. Duflo, born in 1972, is the second woman and the youngest person to be awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences.

Abhijit Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer together have launched a movement within development economics that seeks to ensure that clear, unambiguous answers can be found to the question of whether a particular policy intervention is effective. This is extremely relevant when it comes to framing policy in low- and middle-income countries, where state capacity is quite limited and it is particularly necessary to be able to prioritise more effective policies over less. Duflo and Banerjee’s book, Poor Economics, is an argument for such evidence-based policy, particularly in the Indian context….