Nobel season ends with Nobel Prize in Economics

Images of (L-R) Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2019, are displayed at a news conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden.

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. At 46 years old, Duflo is also the youngest recipient of the prize.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the winners had introduced “a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty”.

It said they had broken the complex issue into “smaller, more manageable questions” making it easier to tackle.

“As a direct result of one of their studies, more than five million Indian children have benefited from effective programmes of remedial tutoring in school,” the Academy said.

“Another example is the heavy subsidies for preventive healthcare that have been introduced in many countries.”

The Nobel economics prize – technically known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize – is the only award not created by philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

Instead, the economics prize was created by the Swedish central bank “in memory of Alfred Nobel” and first awarded in 1969.

Photo: EPA-EFE/Karin Wesslen