Abhijit Banerjee
Abhijit Banerjee | |
|---|---|
| Born | Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee February 21, 1961 Mumbai, India |
| Occupation(s) | Economist, professor |
| Known for | Development economics, experimental economics, co-founder of J-PAL, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2019) |
| Notable work | Good Economics for Hard Times, Poor Economics |
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (; born 21 February 1961) is an economist of Indian American descent and holds the position of Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a worldwide research initiative based at MIT that advocates for evidence-based methods to combat poverty. In 2019, Banerjee was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their pioneering experimental techniques aimed at alleviating global poverty. Banerjee and Duflo, who are married, became only the sixth married pair to receive a Nobel Prize together.
He is recognized as a fellow of the Econometric Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1994, he was honored with a Sloan Research Fellowship, which acknowledges promising early-career scholars with the potential to make significant contributions to their disciplines. According to Research Papers in Economics, Banerjee ranks among the top 75 most prolific development economists worldwide based on his research output.
Early life and education
Banerjee was born in Mumbai to parents of Bengali and Marathi heritage, both of whom were economists. His father, Dipak Banerjee, served as an economics professor at Presidency College Calcutta and completed his PhD at the London School of Economics. His mother, Nirmala Banerjee, held a professorship at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
He attended South Point School in Kolkata, where he demonstrated strong academic performance while maintaining a reserved demeanor. Initially enrolling for mathematics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, he switched after one week to study economics at Presidency University, Kolkata, graduating with a BSc (Honors) in 1981. There, he was taught by his father along with other distinguished economists, developing a particular interest in economic history.
Banerjee pursued his MA in Economics at JNU, drawn more by its politically active environment than by the conventional choice of the Delhi School of Economics. During his tenure at JNU, he participated in student demonstrations resulting in his arrest and detention at Tihar Jail. He completed his master's degree in 1983 and was encouraged to seek doctoral studies abroad.
He applied to doctoral programs at Harvard, Stanford, and UC Berkeley, ultimately enrolling at Harvard despite not having prior admissions from JNU. While there, he studied alongside future leading economists such as Tyler Cowen and Alan Krueger. His academic work included courses under Lawrence Summers and Oliver Hart. His dissertation, advised by Eric Maskin, concentrated on information economics.
Academic career
Banerjee currently serves as the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT and has previously held teaching positions at both Harvard University and Princeton University. He has been awarded fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellow and the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
His scholarly focus lies within development economics, particularly utilizing field experiments to establish causal effects. Elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, he was also honored with the 2009 Infosys Prize in social sciences (economics) and contributed as a juror for this prize’s Social Sciences category in 2018. In 2012, together with Esther Duflo, he received an Honorable Mention for the Gerald Loeb Award for their book Poor Economics.
In 2013, Banerjee was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to participate on a panel revising the Millennium Development Goals. The following year, he was awarded the Bernhard-Harms-Prize by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. In 2019, he delivered the Export-Import Bank of India's Annual Lecture focusing on innovations in social policy design.
That same year, Banerjee shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental work aimed at reducing poverty on a global scale.
Research and activities in India
Abhijit Banerjee and his team evaluate the effectiveness of initiatives, including government schemes, aimed at enhancing living conditions by employing randomized controlled trials, a method comparable to clinical trials used in medicine. For example, although the polio vaccination was provided free of charge in India, many mothers did not bring their children for immunization. In response, Banerjee and MIT’s Esther Duflo implemented a study in Rajasthan where mothers were given a packet of pulses as an incentive to vaccinate their children, resulting in higher immunization rates. Another experiment demonstrated that schools with teaching assistants dedicated to students with special needs experienced better educational outcomes.
Banerjee is a co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab alongside economists Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan. Within India, he contributes as a member of the academic advisory board at Plaksha University, an institution focused on transforming engineering education to meet the demands of a digital era.
In 2021, Banerjee released a cookbook titled Cooking To Save Your Life through Juggernaut.
Personal life
Abhijit Banerjee was previously married to Dr. Arundhati Tuli Banerjee, who taught literature at MIT. They had one son born in 1991 who tragically passed away in an accident in 2016. The couple eventually divorced.
In 2015, Banerjee wed MIT professor and research collaborator Esther Duflo. Together they have two children: Noemie (born 2012) and Milan (born 2014). Banerjee served as a co-supervisor for Duflo’s PhD dissertation in economics at MIT in 1999. Duflo holds a professorship specializing in Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT.
Books
In 2019, Banerjee partnered with Esther Duflo to author *Good Economics for Hard Times*, which explores strategies to tackle challenges such as inequality, climate change, and globalization.
- Aghion, Philippe; Banerjee, Abhijit (2005). Volatility And Growth. Oxford University Press.
- Banerjee, Abhijit Vinayak; Bénabou, Roland; Mookherjee, Dilip (eds.) (2006). Understanding Poverty. Oxford University Press.
- Banerjee, Abhijit Vinayak (2005). Making Aid Work. MIT Press.
- Banerjee, Abhijit V.; Duflo, Esther (2011). Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. PublicAffairs.
- Banerjee, Abhijit Vinayak; Duflo, Esther (eds.) (2017). Handbook of Field Experiments, Volumes 1 & 2. North-Holland Publishing Company.
- Banerjee, Abhijit Vinayak (2019). A Short History of Poverty Measurements. Juggernaut Books.
- Banerjee, Abhijit V.; Duflo, Esther (2019). Good Economics for Hard Times. PublicAffairs.
Awards
In 2019, Abhijit Banerjee was honored with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences together with co-researchers Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for developing an experimental methodology aimed at reducing global poverty.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences emphasized that their pioneering use of experimental techniques has become central to development economics. The Nobel committee highlighted their discoveries showing that simply increasing school days or spending more on textbooks did not substantially enhance learning outcomes in countries like Kenya and India. Their work underscored the necessity of improving school quality alongside boosting enrollment.
This Nobel accolade represented a significant milestone for Development Economics and the application of Randomised Controlled Trials. In India, while the award was widely celebrated, it also ignited controversy due to Banerjee’s pro-poor stance conflicting with the ruling party’s right-wing ideology.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) responded with reservation partly because Banerjee advised Rahul Gandhi on the basic-income initiative NYAY, which was a prominent promise by the Indian National Congress during the 2019 general election. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal criticized Banerjee’s economic perspectives as left-leaning and argued that Indian voters rejected these ideas by favoring BJP candidates. BJP leader Rahul Sinha minimized Banerjee’s accomplishments and accused the Nobel Committee of bias, citing Banerjee’s marriage to Esther Duflo shortly after his divorce from his Indian spouse.
In January 2020, Banerjee received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Calcutta. Additionally, he and Esther Duflo were recipients of the Golden Plate Award presented by the American Academy of Achievement in September 2022.
See also
- Amartya Sen, economist and the first Indian recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics
External links
- Abhijit Banerjee's profile at MIT featuring his curriculum vitae with honors and publications
- Poverty Action Lab
- Research publications hosted by the National Bureau of Economic Research
- including the Nobel Prize Lecture delivered on 8 December 2019 titled Field experiments and the practice of economics
- 1961 births
- Living people
- American people of Bengali descent
- American people of Marathi descent
- 20th-century Bengalis
- 21st-century Bengalis
- Marathi people
- People from Mumbai
- People from Maharashtra
- Presidency University, Kolkata alumni
- University of Calcutta alumni
- Jawaharlal Nehru University alumni
- Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
- MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
- 20th-century Indian economists
- 21st-century Indian economists
- 21st-century American economists
- Naturalized citizens of the United States
- People who lost Indian citizenship
- Indian emigrants to the United States
- 21st-century American writers
- Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Indian microfinance people
- Indian male writers
- Writers from Kolkata
- 20th-century Indian non-fiction writers
- Indian Nobel laureates
- Indian political writers
- American academics of Indian descent
- American Nobel laureates
- Nobel laureates in Economics
- Development economists
- Trustees of the British Museum