Abhijit Banerjee facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Abhijit Banerjee
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Banerjee in November 2011
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| Born |
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
21 February 1961 Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
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| Citizenship | American |
| Spouse(s) |
Arundhati Tuli Banerjee
(div. 2014) |
| Institution | |
| Field | Development economics |
| Alma mater |
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| Doctoral advisor |
Eric Maskin • Andreu Mas-Colell • Jerry Green |
| Doctoral students |
Esther Duflo • Dean Karlan • João Leão • Benjamin Jones • Nancy Qian • Maitreesh Ghatak • Asim Ijaz Khwaja |
| Contributions | Randomized controlled trials |
| Awards |
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| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (born February 21, 1961) is an Indian American economist. He is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He also helped start the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). This is a research center at MIT that uses science to find ways to help people escape poverty.
In 2019, Banerjee won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He shared it with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. They won for their new way of studying how to fight poverty around the world. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo are married. They are the sixth married couple to win a Nobel Prize together.
Banerjee is a highly respected expert in his field. He is a member of important groups like the National Academy of Sciences. In 1994, he received a Sloan Research Fellowship. This award goes to young researchers who might change their fields. Many experts consider Banerjee one of the most productive economists working on development.
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Early Life and Education
Abhijit Banerjee was born in Mumbai, India. His father, Dipak Banerjee, was an economics professor. His mother, Nirmala Banerjee, was also a professor.
Banerjee went to South Point School in Kolkata. People described him as a very smart but quiet student. In high school, he liked literature, history, and math. He first started studying math at the Indian Statistical Institute. But he soon switched to Presidency College to study economics.
He spent three years at Presidency College. He earned his degree in Economics in 1981. He even took classes with his father there. His favorite subject was economic history.
After college, Banerjee studied economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. He chose JNU because of its lively political atmosphere. While at JNU, he was involved in a student protest. He completed his master's degree in 1983. His parents and teachers encouraged him to apply for PhD programs.
Banerjee was accepted to Harvard University. No students from JNU had gone to Harvard before. At Harvard, he studied with many famous professors. His research for his PhD looked at how information affects economics.
Academic Career and Research
Abhijit Banerjee is a professor at MIT. He has also taught at Harvard University and Princeton University. He has received other important awards, like the Guggenheim Fellowship.
His main work is in development economics. This field studies how to improve the lives of people in poorer countries. He and Esther Duflo use a special method called field experiments. These are like science experiments done in real-world settings. They help find out what truly causes changes in people's lives.
In 2004, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He won the Infosys Prize for economics in 2009. In 2012, he and Esther Duflo won an award for their book, Poor Economics.
In 2013, the United Nations Secretary-General asked Banerjee to join a group of experts. Their job was to update the Millennium Development Goals. These goals aimed to solve big global problems like poverty.
In 2019, he gave a lecture for the Export-Import Bank of India. Later that year, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Fighting Poverty with Experiments
Banerjee and his team try to see if programs really help people. They use randomized controlled trials. These are similar to how new medicines are tested. For example, in India, many mothers were not vaccinating their children against polio. Even though the vaccine was free, they did not come.
Banerjee and Esther Duflo tried an experiment in Rajasthan. They gave a bag of pulses (beans) to mothers who brought their children for vaccination. After this, more children got vaccinated. In another study, they found that students learned more when schools had teaching assistants. These assistants helped students who needed extra support.
Banerjee is a co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). This lab uses scientific evidence to fight poverty. He also wrote a cookbook in 2021 called Cooking To Save Your Life.
Personal Life
Abhijit Banerjee was married to Arundhati Tuli Banerjee. They had one son together. They later divorced. Their son passed away in an accident in 2016.
In 2015, Banerjee married his fellow researcher, Esther Duflo. She is also a professor at MIT. They have two children, Noemie and Milan. Esther Duflo was one of Banerjee's PhD students at MIT.
Awards and Recognition
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019. They were honored for their new way of studying how to reduce poverty worldwide.
The Nobel committee said that their experimental research methods are now very important in development economics. They also noted some of their findings. For example, they found that simply adding more school days did not always help students learn more. Also, spending money on textbooks did not always improve learning. In India, many children struggled with basic math questions.
Because of these findings, Banerjee and his co-authors believed that getting more children into school was not enough. They argued that schools also needed to improve the quality of their teaching.
Banerjee's Nobel Prize was a big moment for development economics. It also showed the importance of using randomized controlled trials. In January 2020, he received an honorary degree from the University of Calcutta.
In September 2022, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo received the Golden Plate Award. This award is from the American Academy of Achievement.
See also
In Spanish: Abhijit Banerjee para niños
- Amartya Sen, another economist from India who won a Nobel Prize.
