Indian-American economist Abhijit Banerjee, along with his wife Esther Duflo and colleague Michael Kremer, was awarded Nobel Prize in economics in a ceremony held in Sweden. At the ceremony, Banerjee chose to wear traditional Indian attire -- a black bandhgala paired with an off-white dhoti -- while his wife wore a red and blue saree. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences bestowed the honour upon Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Kremer also sported a black suit.
The prestigious award was announced on October 15. Banerjee and Duflo are the fourth married couple to have won the Nobel together in the prize's history. The three economists were awarded medals at the ceremony and will share the prize money of 9 million Swedish krona (Rs 6.7 crore).
Banerjee, who was born in Mumbai, studied at Presidency College in Kolkata, Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and later Harvard. He is currently working as the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had previously taught at Harvard University and Princeton University. He is also the 2nd Indian-origin economist after Amartya Sen to win the prestigious Nobel Prize in economics.
According to the Nobel Prize Organisation, the trio has played a decisive role in reshaping research in development economics. Their research has already helped in alleviating global poverty and has great potential to further improve the lives of the most impoverished people on the planet.
Banerjee is also the co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (along with economists Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan), a research affiliate of Innovations for poverty action, and a member of the Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty. Together with Duflo, Kremer, John A. List, and Sendhil Mullainathan, he has proposed field experiments as an important methodology to discover causal relationships in economics.
Edited by Manoj Sharma
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