Divide and conquer poverty – the pioneering research by Economics Nobel laureates

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded this year to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."

The laureates have introduced a new approach for obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty, by dividing the issue into smaller, more manageable questions – for example, the most effective interventions for improving child health.

According to official Nobel Prize tweets, the research findings of the winners this year have dramatically improved "our ability to fight global poverty in practice." 

As a result of one of their studies, over five million Indian children have benefitted from programmes of remedial tutoring in schools, read the tweets.

Over 700 million people still subsist on extremely low incomes globally. Every year, five million children still die before their fifth birthday, often from diseases that could be prevented or cured with relatively cheap and simple treatments.

In just two decades, the new experiment-based approach of these three economists has transformed the field of development economics – a flourishing field of research now.

In the mid-1990s, laureate Michael Kremer and his colleagues demonstrated how powerful an experiment-based approach can be, using field experiments to test a range of interventions that could improve school results in western Kenya.

Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, often with Michael Kremer, soon performed similar studies of other issues and in other countries, including India. Their experimental research methods now entirely dominate development economics.

Two of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences this year are related – Esther Duflo is the doctoral student and also wife of Abhijit Banerjee.

Göran K Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the winners Economics Science Nobel Prize winners this year.

After the announcement, Esther Duflo said at a press conference, "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, born in 1972, is the second woman and the youngest Economics Nobel laureate. She and her husband Abhijit Bannerjee, both from MIT, shared this year's Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Kremer.

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, 58, was born in Kolkata, India. He is the second Bengali to win a Nobel prize for economics, after Amartya Sen, who won Nobel prize in 1998 for his work in welfare economics.

Banerjee completed his masters in economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 1983 and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1988.

Now a professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Abhijit had also taught at Harvard and Princeton.

Banerjee and Duflo co-authored the book "Poor Economics."

They are co-founders of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a research affiliate of Innovations for Poverty Action.