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3 U.S. researchers win Nobel Prize in economics for anti-poverty work

By Doug G. Ware
From left to right, Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer split about $300,000 for the prize. Image by Niklas Elmehed/Nobel Media
From left to right, Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer split about $300,000 for the prize. Image by Niklas Elmehed/Nobel Media

Oct. 14 (UPI) -- The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday awarded the Nobel Prize in economics to three researchers at American universities for their "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 was given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for improving the "ability to fight global poverty."

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"In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research," the academy said.

Kremer is an American researcher at Harvard University. India native Banerjee and the French-born Duflo are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"In the mid-1990s, Michael Kremer and his colleagues demonstrated how powerful this approach can be, using field experiments to test a range of interventions that could improve school results in western Kenya," the academy noted. "Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, often with Michael Kremer, soon performed similar studies of other issues and in other countries. Their experimental research methods now entirely dominate development economics."

Monday's award is the final Nobel-affiliated prize of 2019. Nobel Prizes in medicine-physiology, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were awarded last week.

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