India

Indian-American MIT Prof Abhijit Banerjee and wife win Nobel in Economics

Indian-American MIT Prof named Abhijit Banerjee, who won the “2019 Nobel Prize” for Economics jointly with his wife “Esther Duflo” and another economist “Michael Kremer”, is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

According to the MIT website, In 2003, he founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with his French-American wife Duflo, who is also a MIT professor, and Sendhil Mullainathan.. J-PAL has carried out 568 field experiments, or Randomised Control Trials (RCTs), in 10 years in several countries, including India. This includes pollution control audit in Gujarat, MNREGA experiments, and a series of partnerships with the government of Tamil Nadu, the report said. The Prof remains one of the lab’s directors. 

Abhijit Banerjee, who born in 1961 in Mumbai, bagged the award for his “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. The 58-year-old economist received his PhD in 1988 from Harvard University. He specialised in developmental economics. He also studied at the University of Calcutta and Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). 

Moreover, He is a past president of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the NBER, a CEPR research fellow, International Research Fellow of the Kiel Institute, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P Sloan Fellow and a winner of the Infosys prize.

As per the PTI News Agency report, He is the author of a large number of articles and four books, including Poor Economics, which won the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. “Why would a man in Morocco who doesn’t have enough to eat buy a television? Why is it so hard for children in poor areas to learn, even when they attend school? Does having lots of children actually make you poorer?

Answering questions like these is critical if we want to have a chance to really make a dent against global poverty,” Banerjee wrote in the book ”Poor Economics”. Despite all of this, He is the editor of three more books and has directed two documentary films. He also served on the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the website attributed. Duflo, born 1972 in Paris, received her PhD in 1999 from MIT, The PTI news agency reported here.

Last Updated, 7:15:41 PM IST.

About the author

Youth Darpan

Youth Darpan is a fast-paced, real-time News Feed that brings to you the latest happenings and News from India and the world. At Youth Darpan users can publish your opinions, contribute to regional and national news and get updates on the latest happenings.

Add Comment

Click here to post a comment

Leave a Reply

Topics