Dr. Abhijit Banerjee

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is an economist and winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He 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, where he continues to serve as one of the Lab’s Directors.

Banerjee is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society. He is a winner of the Infosys Prize and a co-recipient of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his groundbreaking work in development economics.

He is the author of numerous articles and six 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, as well as Cooking to Save Your Life and Chhaunk: On Food, Economics and Society. He is also the editor of three 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 trustee of Save the Children USA, a trustee of the British Museum, and Chair of the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel and the Global Advisory Board for COVID-19 Response of the Government of West Bengal.