Abhijit V. Banerjee author photo
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Abhijit V. Banerjee

Born: February 21, 1961 – Bombay, Maharashtra, India

Abhijit V. Banerjee is an Indian-born economist whose work centers on development economics, poverty, and evidence-based policy, especially randomized controlled trials. A co-founder of J-PAL, he coauthored Poor Economics and Good Economics for Hard Times and shared the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for experimental approaches to alleviating global poverty.

Biography & Author's Journey

Abhijit V. Banerjee was born in Mumbai in 1961 into a family of economists and was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Harvard, where he earned his doctorate. He has described his years at JNU as intellectually and politically formative, a period that sharpened his sense of how class, caste, gender, and activism shape public life. After early appointments at Princeton and Harvard, he built the bulk of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, eventually becoming Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics. The combination of formal theory, moral seriousness, and curiosity about how poor people actually live became the foundation of his later work. ((https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2019/banerjee/facts/?utm_source=openai))

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Quotes

quote
I think the idea that the poor are sort of fixed machines which have no choice, is all wrong
-Transcript from an interview with Abhijit Banerjee
quote
it was cool to work hard
-Abhijit Banerjee – Biographical
quote
We all learn together about the way the world is
-Abhijit Banerjee – Interview
quote
We want students to get excited about economics because this is a field that can help us address some of the biggest problems society faces
-The power of economics to explain and shape the world
quote
We need data. We need to actually focus on the problem
-Rethinking Poverty
quote
Behavior change is kind of the holy grail of a lot of social policy
-MTV Shuga Soap Opera Turns Edutainment into a Tool to Fight HIV and Gender-Based Violence
quote
My main insight about building an organization is that you have to find the very best people — top talent — and then you have to trust them
-Nobel Prize Recipient, Abhijit Banerjee, Reflects On Leadership In The Social Sector
quote
Very poor design and very little imagination
-Subsidies have a very poor design and very little imagination

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Community Voices

"Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer were awarded Nobel Prize in 2019 for research on economic development"

NBER

"Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee are reinventing development economics"

IMF F&D

"The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their pioneering work alleviating global poverty"

Forbes

"Abhijit V. Banerjee received the Prize in Economic Sciences for his ground-breaking work in development economics research"

NobelPrize.org

"MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write beautifully and are in full command of their subject"

The Guardian

"With their research, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo introduced a new approach to addressing global poverty"

Axios

"Abhijit Banerjee was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for helping to develop an innovative experimental approach to alleviating global poverty"

Britannica

"You probably wouldn't take Abhijit Banerjee for the author of a gripping international bestseller"

The Guardian

"Abhijit Banerjee is the kind of economist who refuses to glorify his profession"

UBS Nobel Perspectives

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