Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee jointly won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2019, along with his wife, Esther Dufflo, and Michael Kremer, for his work on combating global poverty (see
announcement). Prof. Banerjee is currently Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics in MIT, and co-founder of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, along with Esther Dufflo. While his initial work on information economics established his reputation, Prof. Banerjee shot into fame and controversy with his application of biological methods in social science research, leading to the development of Randomized Control Trial (RCT) method. This method has arguably become the gold standard in evaluating the impact of intervention strategies in health, education, employment, and allied areas, and is widely used in impact evaluation studies by the “randomistas”. The publication of his book “Poor Economics” in 2011, outlining a strategy to combat global poverty based on RCT and incorporating feedback from the poor, set the seal on his reputation, and it was only a matter of time before he would win the Nobel prize.