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Nobel Economics Prize Goes to Pioneers in Reducing Poverty Nobel Economics Prize Goes to Pioneers in Reducing Poverty
(about 4 hours later)
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of M.I.T. and Michael Kremer of Harvard have devoted more than 20 years of economic research to developing new ways to study — and help — the world’s poor.Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of M.I.T. and Michael Kremer of Harvard have devoted more than 20 years of economic research to developing new ways to study — and help — the world’s poor.
On Monday, their experimental approach toward poverty alleviation won them the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Dr. Duflo, 46, is both the youngest economics laureate ever and the second woman to be honored. On Monday, their experimental approach to alleviating poverty won them the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Dr. Duflo, 46, is the youngest economics laureate ever and the second woman to receive the prize in its half-century history.
The three researchers study problems like education deficiencies and child health scientifically. They break issues into smaller questions, search for evidence about which interventions work to resolve them, and seek practical ways to bring those treatments to scale. In studying problems like education deficiencies and child health, the economists search for evidence about which interventions can resolve them, and seek practical ways to bring good treatments to scale.
“In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. “In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the prize.
More than five million Indian children have benefited from effective remedial tutoring thanks to one of their studies, the release noted, while other work of theirs has inspired public investment in preventive health care.More than five million Indian children have benefited from effective remedial tutoring thanks to one of their studies, the release noted, while other work of theirs has inspired public investment in preventive health care.
Nobels have typically gone to more theoretical work. This year’s laureates distinguished themselves with work that is experimental and has immediate real-world impact. It shows that the field as a whole is approaching problems differently, a change that Dr. Banerjee, Dr. Duflo and Dr. Kremer have helped to bring about, their peers said. Nobels are often awarded for theoretical achievements, but this year’s laureates distinguished themselves with real-world trials. Other economists said the choice showed that the field as a whole was approaching problems differently, a change that Dr. Banerjee, Dr. Duflo and Dr. Kremer had helped to bring about.
Twenty years ago, “there was a lot of emphasis on economic theory, and more macroeconomic questions of development,” said Benjamin Olken, an economist at M.I.T. The Nobel winners broke those big questions into smaller problems and studied them like scientists running clinical trials. Twenty years ago, “there was a lot of emphasis on economic theory, and more macroeconomic questions of development,” said Benjamin Olken, an M.I.T. economist. The Nobel winners broke those big questions into testable chunks and studied them like scientists running clinical trials.
“The approach has been tremendously influential in reshaping the field of development economics,” Dr. Olken said.“The approach has been tremendously influential in reshaping the field of development economics,” Dr. Olken said.
They have also worked to spread the approach. Dr. Duflo and Dr. Banerjee, who are married, in 2003 helped to found a global network of poverty researchers called the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, or J-PAL. The coalition helps to identify effective interventions — like deworming campaigns — and then works with governments and nongovernment organizations to implement them. The winners have sought to popularize their methods. Dr. Duflo and Dr. Banerjee, who are married, in 2003 helped to found a global network of poverty researchers called the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, or J-PAL. The coalition helps to identify effective interventions — like deworming campaigns — and then joins with governments and nongovernmental organizations to carry them out.
Speaking at a news conference shortly after learning of the award, Dr. Duflo said the award recognized the collective contributions of hundreds of poverty researchers. The Nobel committee highlighted research involving Dr. Kremer that was based on an experiment with groups of Kenyan schoolchildren in the mid-1990s. It found that access to extra textbooks did not improve most student outcomes — suggesting that a simple lack of resources was not the main impediment to learning.
“It really reflects the fact that it has become a movement, a movement that is much larger than us,” she said. “He was there from the very beginning, and took enormous risks,” Dr. Duflo, in an interview, said of Dr. Kremer’s early use of experimental methods. “He is a visionary.”
She, Dr. Banerjee and their co-authors built on his work and his methods. In a subsequent experiment, they identified a true barrier to student achievement: teaching methods that were insufficiently shaped to student need. Tutors for low-performing pupils in India improved achievement measurably, and lastingly.
Dr. Banerjee, born in 1961 in Mumbai, earned his doctorate from Harvard. He is the Ford Foundation international professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the early days, “people thought, this is kind of a loony agenda,” Dr. Banerjee said. “People often told us: That’s not how you learn about anything, because it’s too small, too local.”
Dr. Duflo, born in 1972 in Paris, has a doctorate from M.I.T., where she is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics. Dr. Duflo won the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association in 2010, a frequent precursor to the Nobel. But as the years wore on and the results came in, randomized control trials gained acceptance as a key tool in development research.
Dr. Kremer, born in 1964, has a doctorate from Harvard, where he is the Gates professor of developing societies. “They provided a way to objectively check if a project has the benefits it says it is going to have,” said William Easterly, an economist at New York University who has criticized poverty interventions that aim to fix immediate problems without solving the systemic political issues at their core.
The researchers’ peers were quick to applaud the prize. While he warned that control trials were not a panacea, he said he gave the three laureates “a lot of credit for creating a more rigorous evaluation methodology.”
“Congratulations to Banerjee Duflo and Kremer on the Nobel and to the committee for making a prize that seemed inevitable happen sooner rather than later,” Richard Thaler, who won the award in 2017, said on Twitter. Dr. Duflo and Dr. Kremer have often produced joint studies, including guides on how to use and perform the economic field trials. Dr. Duflo and Dr. Banerjee also collaborate regularly, publishing studies just this year on “Using Gossips to Spread Information” — in which well-connected villagers were selected to spread information and increase vaccination rates — and using police resources to counter drunken driving in India.
“Fabulous news!” Cass Sunstein, a co-author with Mr. Thaler on a book about behavior economics and a professor at Harvard, wrote on Twitter. He described a recent study by one of the winners as “profound, implication-filled.” The pair have a book, “Good Economics for Hard Times,” coming out in November, following their 2011 book “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.”
“The three of them have just been transformative in leading by example,” said Amy Finkelstein, a leading health economist, who said their research methods had helped to shape her own work. She works with the three winners through J-PAL. Peers were quick to applaud the selection.
“This is probably the first 21st-century prize in economics,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. “We’ve given lots of prizes for the advances of the 20th century.” “Congratulations to Banerjee Duflo and Kremer on the Nobel and to the committee for making a prize that seemed inevitable happen sooner rather than later,” Richard Thaler, a University of Chicago economist who won the award in 2017, said on Twitter.
“Their methods, and this is not stuff worked on 20, 30 years ago — this is stuff that, none of it started until the 2000s,” Dr. Katz said. “This really is 21st-century economics, and it’s wonderful that we’re moving into the 21st century with the Nobel prize, in my view.” Dr. Thaler’s award, for his contributions in behavioral economics, was based on real-world observations, and experimental approaches have also been used in labor economics for years, said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. But the new Nobel laureates helped to bring scientific rigor and real-world impact to development economics.
The Nobel committee specifically highlighted a study Dr. Kremer helped write that looked at groups of school children in Kenya in the mid-1990s. It found that access to extra textbooks did not improve most student outcomes — showing the impediment to learning was not a simple lack of resources. “This is probably the first 21st-century prize in economics,” Dr. Katz said. “This is not stuff worked on 20, 30 years ago — this is stuff that, none of it started until the 2000s.”
A subsequent experiment by Dr. Duflo, Dr. Banerjee and their co-authors identified a true barrier to student achievement: teaching methods that were insufficiently shaped to student need. Tutors for low-performing pupils in India improved achievement measurably, and lastingly. Dr. Duflo and Dr. Kremer have often written joint research, including guides on how to use randomized field experiments, the approach they champion, to study economic questions. Dr. Duflo said she hoped that the Nobel would give development economics added visibility, potentially drawing more women into a field where they are often underrepresented — sometimes driven away by economics’ aggressive posture, sometimes by its finance-focused reputation.
She and Dr. Banerjee collaborate regularly, publishing studies this year on “Using Gossips to Spread Information” — in which well-connected villagers were selected to spread information and increase vaccination rates — and using police resources to counter drunken driving in India. She was a history major in college, but she was intrigued by the stories of global disparity that her mother, a pediatrician, brought back from her work in Madagascar, El Salvador and Rwanda.
The pair have a book, “Good Economics for Hard Times,” coming out in November, and they wrote an previous book, titled “Poor Economics.” “I came to economics the day I realized there was something called development economics,” Dr. Duflo said. “I didn’t want to do macro, and I didn’t want to do finance.”
William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, who have studied climate change and technological innovation, were honored last year. Professor Nordhaus, of Yale University, is a proponent of a tax on carbon emissions as a way to address climate change. Although he has convinced many members of the economics profession about the benefits of a carbon tax, the federal government has yet to adopt one. Speaking by phone Monday afternoon, Dr. Duflo had not yet managed to get on the phone with her mother to tell her about the prize: Even now, she is busy in Guatemala.
Professor Romer, of New York University, was cited for demonstrating how government policy could drive technological change. He noted the success of efforts to reduce emissions of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in the 1990s. And what comes after a Nobel? Dr. Duflo and Dr. Banerjee said their next step would be to use the spotlight to spread the word about careful experimentation and its real-world application for solving big problems.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, for his work in restarting peace talks with Eritrea and restoring some freedoms in his country after decades of repression. That is in keeping with their reputation. Beyond their own research, the winners have been instrumental in both teaching graduate students and creating a network of researchers who are deploying controlled trials to help solve pressing problems, their colleagues said.
The prize for medicine and physiology was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their work in discovering how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. “The three of them have just been transformative in leading by example,” said Amy Finkelstein, a leading health economist at M.I.T.
The prize for physics went to three scientists who transformed our view of the cosmos: James Peebles, a cosmologist, shared half of the prize with two astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz.
The prize for chemistry was awarded to three scientists who developed lithium-ion batteries: John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino will share the prize.
The prize for literature was awarded to Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish author, and Peter Handke, an Austrian writer. Mr. Handke won this year’s prize, while Ms. Tokarczuk won the 2018 prize, which had been postponed for a year because of a scandal at the academy.