Abhijeet Banerjee is an Indian-origin Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been awarded the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences along with wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer.
Via: Department of Economics – UZH
Yes, the second recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics Esther Duflo was a former co-researcher and doctoral advisee of Abhijeet. They had lived together for 18 months before getting married in 2015. They also have a 7-year-old child.
The three economists have been awarded for “their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”
According to the announcement:
“This year’s Laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty. It divides this issue into smaller, more manageable questions – for example, the most effective interventions for improving child health.”
Early Education
Abhijeet Vinayak Banerjee did his graduation from the University of Calcutta and further studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University. He wrote his Doctoral Thesis on ‘Essays in Information Economics’ and received his PhD in 1988.
He was born to Nirmala Banerjee, a professor of economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and Dipak Banerjee, a professor and the Head of The Department of Economics at Presidency College, Calcutta.
Career
Banerjee co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab along with economists Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan.
He was also the president of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow at the Econometric Society.
Path To Fame
Banerjee authored four books including Poor Economics (with wife Esther Duflo). Poor Economics has won the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year and the Gerald Loeb Award Honorable Mention for Business Book.
Banerjee has also co-directed two documentary films: ‘The Magnificent Journey: Times and Tales of Democracy’ (with Ranu Ghosh) in 2019 and ‘The Name of the Disease’ in 2006.
This is a proud moment for all of us! We congratulate Abhijeet for his achievement.