Banerjee, Abhijit Vanayak, 1961–, Indian-American economist, b. Mumbai, Ph.D. Harvard, 1988. He taught economics at Princeton (1988–92) and Harvard (1992–93) before moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1993–), where he has been Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics since 2003. He is a cofounder and codirector of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a research center devoted to designing and evaluating approaches to alleviating global poverty. In 2019 he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Esther Duflo (his wife) and Michael Kremer for their work in helping to develop an innovative and experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Instead of using the standard analytic approach to development economics, they employ field research in developing countries, applying controlled experiments at the local level. His books include Volatility and Growth (2005, with P. Aghion), Understanding Poverty (2006, ed. with R. Benabou and D. Mookherjee), Making Aid Work (2007), Poor Economics (2011, with Duflo), Handbook of Field Experiments, Vol. 1 and 2 (2017, with Duflo), What the Economy Needs Now (2019, ed. with G. Gopinath et al.), and Good Economics for Hard Times (2019, with Duflo). He also is the codirector of the documentary films The Name of the Disease (2006) and The Magnificent Journey: Times and Tales of Democracy (2019).
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