Abhijit Banerjee
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Primary Section: 54, Economic Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2020)
Photo Credit: Bryce Vickmark |
Biosketch
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003 he co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) with Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, and he remains one of the Lab’s Directors. Banerjee is a past president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the NBER, a CEPR research fellow, International Research Fellow of the Kiel Institute, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and a winner of the Infosys Prize.
Abhijit is the author of a large number of articles and four books, including Poor Economics, which won the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year, and Good Economics for Hard Times, both co-authored with Esther Duflo. He is the editor of three more books and has directed two documentary films. Banerjee has served on the U.N. Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. He is a co-recipient of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his groundbreaking work in development economics research.
Research Interests
Abhijit Banerjee's research interests are in development economics and economic theory. He co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a global research center working to reduce poverty be ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of 194 affiliated professors at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty. J-PAL engages with partners to conduct rigorous research, build capacity, share policy lessons, and scale up effective programs. J-PAL was launched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has regional offices in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
