Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 2019

Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Question: Which Indian-American economist has been conferred Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for year 2019?
(a) Abhijit Banerjee
(b) Manisha Kulshrestha
(c) P Sadasivam
(d) Annie Zaidi
Answer: (a)
Related facts:

  • Indian origin economist Abhijit Banerjee, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for the year 2019.
  • The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to confer the 2019 Nobel to Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Esther Duflo from MIT and Michael Kremer from Harvard.
  • The trio has been awarded for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, one of humanities most pressing issues.
  • The trio’s experimental research methods have benefited over 5 million Indian children, who are part of remedial tutoring programmes in schools.

About Abhijit Banerjee:

  • Born in Mumbai,Abhijit did his B.Sc.(H) in economics from University of Calcutta, completed his M.A. in economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU),Delhi in 1983.Further,he obtained a Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University in 1988.
  • He is an International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.
  • He is also a co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab along with economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Esther Duflo.

About Nobel Prize for Economics:

  • Formally known as Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences,it was established in 1968 by Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank) in memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.
  • The award carries a gold medal, a diploma and a 9 million-kronor (or $918,000) cash award.
  • The first Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969.

Links:
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2019/press-release
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhijit_Banerjee