His wife & fellow economist is joint winner; Prez, PM extend greetings

Indian-American innovative MIT economist Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Harvard professor Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.

Banerjee and French-American Duflo both work at the US-based Massachusetts  Institute of Technology (MIT) while Kremer is at Harvard University.

President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and a host of other leaders congratulated Banerjee on winning the coveted prize.

“Their research has helped economists better understand how to fight poverty in India and the world,” Kovind said.

Prime Minister Modi said, “Congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee on being conferred the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.”

Congratulating Banerjee, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said he had helped the party conceptualise its “Nyay” scheme to help remonetise the economy.

Banerjee was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 1988. He is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the MIT.

In 2003, Banerjee founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, and he remains one of its directors.

In Kolkata, his mother Nirmala Banerjee said it was a proud moment for her.

She said she is also happy as one of the joint winners of the prestigious award is her daughter-in-law.

“I am very happy and proud of his achievements,” said Nirmala, a former professor of economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences. Her husband Dipak Banerjee is also a professor and the head of the department of Economics at then Presidency College (now University).

“He did great work in understanding poverty and how the poor survived. At times we used to discuss various topics and issues on economics. He has also spoken on economic issues our country is facing presently,” she said.

It was “wonderful” to receive the award, 58-year-old Banerjee said. “You don’t get this lucky many times in your life,” he added.

Duflo, the 46-year-old former adviser to ex-US President Barack Obama, is the second woman and the youngest ever to win the economics prize.

“We are incredibly happy and humbled,” Duflo was quoted as saying by the MIT News. “We feel very fortunate to see this kind of work being recognised.”

The prize includes 9 million-kronor (USD 918,000) cash, a gold medal and a diploma. The winners will equally share the prize money.

Announcing the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said 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.”

They have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty, it said.

Their “research findings — and those of the researchers following in their footsteps — have dramatically improved our ability to fight poverty in practice,” it said.

As a direct result of one of their studies, more than five million Indian children have benefitted from effective programmes of remedial tutoring in schools. Another example is the heavy subsidies for preventive healthcare that have been introduced in many countries, it added.

“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,” Duflo told a press conference over phone soon after the announcement.

Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the MIT and a co-founder and co-director of the J-PAL.

Banerjee supervised Duflo’s PhD with Joshua Angrist in 1990. The duo got married in 2015 and their co-authored book ‘Good Economics in Hard Times’ will hit the stands this week.

With Banerjee, Duflo wrote Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011 and has been translated into more than 17 languages.

She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance. Her first degrees were in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. She subsequently received a PhD. In Economics from MIT in 1999.

Duflo has received numerous academic honours and prizes. She is the Editor of the American Economic Review, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Kremer, 54, a development economist, is currently the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University.

Congratulating Banerjee and his wife Duflo, the MIT said their work has dramatically improved global ability to fight poverty in practice, including in India.

JNU vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar also expressed pride at Banerjee’s achievement. “JNU is proud of his achievement. Our alumni are torch bearers of JNU. We are proud of them,” he tweeted.