The Reinhard Selten Institute (RSI) and the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute congratulate Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo (both Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Michael Kremer (Harvard University) for being awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.
The Nobel Laureate’s research focuses on the pressing question on how to fight global poverty. “They changed the way economists think about measures to reduce global poverty by introducing rigorous field experiments to development economics”, states Bettina Rockenbach (RSI Director). For example, their experimental approach showed that reforms that match teaching to children’s learning levels are of great value, improving education for over 60 million pupils in India and Africa. “By identifying causal effects for poverty and testing and evaluating the impact of possible interventions, e.g. in the fields of health, education, or resource conservation, the laureates not only significantly contributed to economic research, but also to global poverty reduction”, Bettina Rockenbach concludes.
Current research insights on the topic were also presented during the recent Selten Lecture by Matthew O. Jackson (Stanford University). Jackson’s joint research with Banerjee, Duflo and Arun G. Chandrasekhar (Stanford University) explores how the introduction of microfinance changes the networks of interactions among households in Indian villages.