I was sleeping in the evening today, and when I woke up, at 5:45 pm, I saw my mobile phone. There was a news notification where I could only see a picture of Prof. Abhijit Banerjee. I searched for my specs and put them on. The first word came from my mouth were “Oh my God!”.
Being an Indian, I am proud that this year’s nobel laureate is Indian born. More than that, I am jumping because this year’s economics nobel is given for the marvelous work in the Development Economics. I am following both, Banerjee and Duflo, since past two years. First time I was introduced to their work by my friend, who suggested me to read their book “Poor Economics“. Both the economists has done great work surveying in the developing countries. Their major research was focused around the countries of South Asia and sub-saharan Africa.
Banerjee is the second Indian-born economist to win a nobel. The first one was also from the same field of development—Amartya Sen. There are many things which are common in both of them. Most interestingly, they both are Bengali and are alumni from Presidency College, Kolkata. Esther Duflo is a french economist, trained in both Paris School of Economics and MIT. And the third economist, Michael Kremer, is a Harvard Professor.
Every year’s nobel comes with lot of stories. Like last year William Nordhaus and Paul Romer won this for works in environmental policy and macroeconomics, respectively. In 2017, Richard Thaler, popularly known as the father of behavioural economics, won for his marvelous contributions towards the behavioural economics.
Banerjee and Duflo’s book, Poor Economics, starts with ” Every year, 9 million children die before their fifth birthday”. Their book discusses deeply about economics conditions of poor. Their another great essay on “Economic Lives of the Poor” tries to address the problems for the reason of poverty. Their works are famous around the globe. All three economists have spend years studying the cause of poverty and developing scientific methods to understand it. The most interesting part in Kremer’s CV is that he has worked in a Secondary School in Kenya. This truly shows his enthusiasm towards the field of development since he was young.
However, I am not a believer of determining the ability of researchers from nobel. As the Nobel committee has ignored many prominent economists like Jagdish Bhagwati, whose contribution in Trade and Development is significant and realistic. In future we’ll find more economists, obviously, winning this prestigious prize. Prof. Raj Chetty, I was expecting whom to win Nobel this year, also have done great works in development and public economics. His contributions are very significant and can certainly help the policy makers in framing the solutions using his approach of big data specially.
Biased Economist 