Nobel Prize in Economics focused on fighting …

The Nobel Prize in Economics 2019 was awarded to the Indian Abhijit Banerjee, the French Esther Duflot and the American Michael Kremer. The three economists were rewarded for introducing new approaches to find the best ways to fight global poverty, focusing on concrete and manageable aspects such as, for example, finding the most effective interventions to improve health or education of children, according to said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

With this award, the series of Nobel Prize announcements is closed. Last week, prizes were awarded in the disciplines of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

In the mid-1990s, Kremer and his colleagues demonstrated how effectively approaches can have the experience of using field experience to evaluate a series of interventions likely to to improve academic achievement in western Kenya.

Banerjee and Duflo, often in cooperation with Kremer, have conducted similar studies in other fields and in other countries.

"The laureates – and those who have followed in their footsteps in other studies – have significantly improved our ability to fight poverty," said the statement from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Following one of the studies, more than five million children in India have been favored by programs aimed at improving educational outcomes. Another example is that of subsidies for preventive health programs in some countries.

Who are the winners?

Michael Kremer

The American economist is known for his experience of development issues in African and Latin American countries. With Banerjee and Duflot, he has conducted research in the fields of education, health, water supply and agriculture in developing countries.

Kremer was born in 1964 and is currently a professor at the Harvard Development Society, where he also dealt with issues related to immigration and globalization. He holds a PhD in economics from this same university and was selected from the top 50 American scientists.

The Swedish Academy noted that Kremer helped demonstrate, in the mid-1990s, the utility of the experimental approach of testing interventions to improve educational outcomes in the West. of Kenya.

Esther Duflo

The French economist has earned a reputation in the world of numbers for his ability to apply theories of the fight against poverty to the real world and is considered one of the most influential economists in France, although his voice has been the most heard in the world. United States only in their country of origin.

Duflo had been recognized several times. In 2010, she received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2010 (which distinguishes the best American economist under 40) and in 2015, the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences.

That's what we learned in 2013, when the then President of the United States, Barack Obama, included him in his exclusive presidential development committee, l & # 39; It was a weapon with which he intended to promote ideas to eliminate inequalities.

For Duflo and his collaborators, the theory does not stay in the books, it is designed to become reality and to face the challenges of the world it intended to transform. "The key is how to spend money, not how much," he says in his book "Rethinking Poverty", where he theorizes his divorce with macroeconomics in favor of the application of his thesis .

Starting from these principles, at the head of the laboratory that he established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Duflo launched a vast program of studies of humanitarian projects aimed at optimizing their performance, putting the Focus on millions of human beings with less than a dollar a day.

With a "pragmatic left", Duflo rejects the "right" discourse that the problem of underdevelopment is based on bad government and considers it as "an argument for doing nothing or cutting budgets". She is the mother of a son of Indian economist Abhijit Vanayak Banerjee, also recognized Monday with the Nobel Prize.

Abhijit Vanayak Banerjee

He is an economist who has devoted his career to understanding and studying new ways to fight poverty in the world. Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in 2003, he co-founded this university with Duflo, the "Laboratory of action against poverty" (Abdul Latif Jameel Action Lab) or J-PAL, a center that they have been running since. .

Banerjee was born in 1961 in Mumbai, a city in western India. He trained in this country and then obtained a doctorate from Harvard University. His areas of research are the economics of development and economic theory, as summarized by J-PAL on his website.

At the heart of his career is the creation of J-PAL in Duflo's company, an institution "whose mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that public policies are based on scientific evidence, "according to his website.

As a university student on the ground, he has collaborated extensively with international organizations such as the UN or the Save the Children NGO. His best-known work, written in collaboration with Duflo, is the study "Rethinking Poverty: A Radical Turn in the Fight Against Global Inequalities".