The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded Monday to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”
Banerjee and Duflo are both at Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Kremer is at Harvard University. Duflo is the second woman to win the economics prize.
Duflo, who was woken up by Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday, said that getting the prize “incredibly humbling.”
Duflo is only the second woman to win the economics prize, after Elinor Ostrom got it in 2009, and is also the youngest ever to receive the economics award.
Officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the award wasn’t created by the prize founder, but is considered to be part of the Nobel stable of awards.
It was created by Riksbanken, the Swedish central bank, in 1968, and the first winner was selected a year later.
With the glory comes a 9 million-kronor ($918,000) cash award, a gold medal and a diploma.
Last week, six Nobel prizes were given — medicine, physics and chemistry plus two literature awards, and the coveted Peace Prize.
All but the winner of the Peace Prize receive their awards on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896 — in Stockholm. The winner of the Peace Prize receives the award in Oslo, Norway.
