In pictures: Esther Duflo wears sari, husband Abhijit Banerjee dhoti as they receive Nobel Prize

SUMMARY

Indian American economist Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Esther Duflo received their 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics at a ceremony in Stockholm on Tuesday. Banerjee donned a dhoti while Duflo sported a sari for the occasion. The husband-wife shared the prestigious award with fellow economist Michael Kremer. The three researchers were awarded "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Banerjee and Duflo work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Kremer is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University.

By CNBC-TV18Dec 11, 2019 11:14:17 AM IST (Published)

Born in Kolkata, Banerjee attended South Point School and Presidency College in the city before heading to the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi for his master’s degree.

Speaking with CNBC-TV18 after the announcement of the prize in October, Banerjee said that it was a recognition for their work over the past two decades.

"It is for the work we have been doing for the last 20 years and the work involves trying to figure out why particular interventions work or don’t work or what works well and the way we do that is by organizing large-scale randomized trials, largescale experiments where you try out the programme," Banerjee told CNBC-TV18.

Duflo, born in Paris, is the youngest person ever and only the second woman to receive the economics prize. The first was Elinor Ostrom in 2009.

Following the announcement of the award in October, she said: "Showing that it is possible for a woman to succeed and be recognized for success I hope is going to inspire many, many other women to continue working and many other men to give them the respect that they deserve like every single human being."

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three economists created new ways to fight poverty by focusing on smaller, more manageable issues like education or child health. They said Kremer showed the power of that approach in the mid-1990s in fieldwork in Kenya.

The academy said that as a direct result of the winners' studies, five million Indian children benefited from remedial tutoring in schools. Banerjee, Duflo and others created tools to improve educational outcomes through their research center, the Poverty Action Lab.

Abhijit Banerjee, left, receives the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, in Stockholm, on Tuesday. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP)