The Nobel Prize-winning duo shows how economics, when applied correctly, can help us solve the toughest political and social problems of our time.
Solving our major economic problems is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time, more than space travel or revolutionary breakthroughs in medicine. The good life we have always wanted is at stake.
Immigration and discrimination, globalization and technological collapse, slow growth and increasingly severe climate change - these are common concerns of all humanity.
We have the resources to tackle these problems, what we need are ideas that will help us overcome the barriers of disagreement and suspicion. If we succeed, history will look back on our era with gratitude, if we fail, we will face immeasurable losses.
In this groundbreaking book, renowned MIT economist Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo tackle the challenge with the latest economic research, presented with extraordinary clarity and grace.
Original, provocative, and somewhat urgent, “The Economics of Hard Times” offers a compelling solution based on intelligent interventionism and a society with compassion and mutual respect at its core. It is an extraordinary, illuminating achievement in helping us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.
Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, two economists whose work has transformed anti-poverty research and relief efforts, have been named co-laureates of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, along with fellow laureate Harvard University economist Michael Kremer.
“We are incredibly happy and humbled,” Duflo told MIT News after learning of the award. “We are very fortunate to see this kind of work recognized.”
Banerjee told MIT News that it was “amazing” to receive the award, adding that “you don’t get this lucky many times in your life.”
Duflo and Banerjee also co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT in 2003, along with a third co-founder, Sendhil Mullainathan, now at the University of Chicago.J-PAL—a global network of anti-poverty researchers conducting field experiments—has become a major research center, facilitating work around the world.
