Dr. Duflo and Dr. Kremer have often produced joint studies, including guides on how to use and perform the economic field trials. Dr. Duflo and Dr. Banerjee also collaborate regularly, publishing studies just this year on “Using Gossips to Spread Information” — in which well-connected villagers were selected to spread information and increase vaccination rates — and using police resources to counter drunken driving in India.
The pair have a book, “Good Economics for Hard Times,” coming out in November, following their 2011 book, “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.”
Peers were quick to applaud the selection.
“Congratulations to Banerjee Duflo and Kremer on the Nobel and to the committee for making a prize that seemed inevitable happen sooner rather than later,” Richard Thaler, a University of Chicago economist who won the award in 2017, said on Twitter.
Dr. Thaler’s award, for his contributions in behavioral economics, was based on real-world observations, and experimental approaches have also been used in labor economics for years, said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. But the new Nobel laureates helped to bring scientific rigor and real-world impact to development economics.
“This is probably the first 21st-century prize in economics,” Dr. Katz said. “This is not stuff worked on 20, 30 years ago — this is stuff that, none of it started until the 2000s.”
Dr. Duflo said she hoped that the Nobel would give development economics added visibility, potentially drawing more women into a field where they are often underrepresented — sometimes driven away by economics’ aggressive posture, sometimes by its finance-focused reputation.
She was a history major in college, but she was intrigued by the stories of global disparity that her mother, a pediatrician, brought back from her work in Madagascar, El Salvador and Rwanda.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/business/nobel-economics.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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