Poor Economics

Global poverty is a huge problem with no clear solution. In order to provide real, lasting improvements to the poverty problem, economists need to understand the social, cultural, and psychological, not just economic, reasons behind why poor people make the decisions they do. When economists understand the real everyday experiences and motivations of poor people, they will be better able to incentivize them to make choices that can lead to lasting change. Finding methods to encourage poor people to educate all their children, take advantage of health care, consume nutritionally dense food, and sign up for insurance, are significant steps to helping reduce poverty. To bring about lasting change, women must be empowered, strong social support systems, and steady, stable jobs must be available in developing nations. Big political change, as well as local problem solving, also has to happen in order to eradicate global poverty.

Abhijit V. Banerjee is an economist and the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a co-founder of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Previously, he taught at Harvard University and Princeton University.

Banerjee is a co-winner of the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. He was the former president of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, and previously worked as a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and as a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He is also a former Guggenheim Fellow.

Esther Duflo is an economist and the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

She is a National Bureau of Economic Research research associate and serves as the director of the Centre for Economic Policy Research's development economics program. Duflo is a co-winner of the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Abhijit V. Banerjee and Michael Kremer.