Abhijit Banerjee
Encyclopedia
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (born 1961) is an India
n economist
. He is currently the Ford Foundation
International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. Banerjee is a co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
(along with economists Esther Duflo
and Sendhil Mullainathan
) and a Research Affiliate of Innovations for Poverty Action, a New Haven, Connecticut
based research outfit dedicated to creating and evaluating solutions to social and international development problems, and a Member of the Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty
. He is also the recipient of the inaugural Infosys Prize
in the category of Social Sciences (Economics).
, India
to Dipak Banerjee, Professor and Head of Department of Economics, Presidency College, Calcutta and Nirmala Banerjee, Professor of Economics, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
.
He attended South Point School and Presidency College, Calcutta
, where he completed his B.Sc degree in Economics
in 1981. Later, he completed his M.A. in Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University
, New Delhi
in 1983. Later he went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University
in 1988. The subject of his doctoral thesis is "Essays in Information Economics".
. Prior to joining MIT, he taught at Harvard
and Princeton
.
His work focuses on development economics
. Together with Esther Duflo
, Michael Kremer
, John List
and Sendhil Mullainathan
, he has proposed field experiments as an important methodology to discover causal relationships in economics.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 2004. He was also honored with the Infosys Prize 2009 in the Social Sciences category of Economics.
The Miracle of Micro nance? Evidence From a Randomized Evaluation
June 2010
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster and Cynthia Kinnan
Targeting the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia
May 2010
Abhijit Banerjee, Vivi Alatas, Rema Hanna, Benjamin Olken and Julia Tobias
The Shape of Temptation: Impications for the Economic Lives of the Poor
April 2010
Abhijit Banerjee and Sendhil Mullainathan
Giving Credit Where it is Due
March 2010
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Improving Health Care Delivery in India
November 2009
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Marry for What? Caste and Selection in Modern India
2009
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Maitreesh Ghatak and Jeanne Lafortune
The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster and Cynthia Kinnan
May 2009
Parochial Politics: Ethnic Perferences and Politician Corruption
Abhijit Banerjee and Rohini Pande
2009
Corruption
Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna and Sendhil Mullainathan
February 2009
Why Does Missallocation Persist?
Abhijit Banerjee and Benjamin Moll
February 2009
A Capitalist Knows Who To Call
A. Banerjee
2008, M. Kinsley, Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Other Economic Leaders, pp.161-165.
Why fighting poverty is hard
September 2008
Abhijit Banerjee
Big Answers for Big Questions: The Presumption of Growth Policy
Abhijit Banerjee
September 2008
The Experimental Approach to Development Economics
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
September 2008
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs:Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India
Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, Stuti Khemani
August 2008
Mandated Empowerment: Handing Antipoverty Policy Back to the Poor?
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
June 2008
Why Has Unemployment Risen in the New South Africa
Abhijit Banerjee, Sebastian Galiani, Jim Levinsohn, Zoe McLaren and Ingrid Woolard
June 2008
Making Aid Work
Abhijit Banerjee and Ruimin He
May 2008
Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Creit Constraints Using a Directed Lending Program
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
May 2008
Improving Immunization Coverage in Rural India: A Clustered Randomized Controlled Evaluation of Immunization Campaigns with and without Incentives
May 2010
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster and Dhruva Kothari
Limited Attention and Income Distribution
Abhijit Banerjee and Sendhil Mullainthan
January 2008
Aging and Death under a Dollar a Day
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
December 2007
What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes Around the World?
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
December 2007
Public Action for Public Goods
A. Banerjee, L. Iyer and R. Somanathan
September 2006, Handbook of Development Economics, Vo. 4
The Economic Lives of the Poor
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
April 2006, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vo. 21(1), pp. 141-167
Updated Table (March 17, 2008) for Economic Lives of the Poor and What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes Around the World?
with Esther Duflo
Comment on Buiter-Patel
April 2006, India Policy Forum, Vo. 2
The Paradox of Indian Growth: A comment on Kochar et al.
A. Banerjee
July 2006, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vo. 53(5), pp. 1021-1026
The Political Economy of Public Goods: Some Evidence from India
A. Banerjee and R. Somanathan
April 2006
Growth Theory through the Lens of Development Economics
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
December 2005, Published: Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 1a. Amserdam: Elsevier, pp. 473-552
Remedying Education Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole, E. Duflo and L. Linden
December 2005, NBER Working paper 11904
Addressing Absence
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
May 2005, Published: Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vo. 20 (1), pp. 117-132
Bank Financing in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
2005, India’s and China’s Recent Experience with Reform and Growth, Wanda Tseng and David Cowen, eds.
Bank Financing in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
2005, India’s and China’s Recent Experience with Reform and Growth, Wanda Tseng and David Cowen, eds.
Inequality and Investment
A. Banerjee
December 2004
Notes Toward a Theory of Industrialization in the Developing World
A. Banerjee
October 2004, Marjit, S. and N. Banerjee (Eds.) Development, Displacement and Disparity: India in the Last Quarter of the Century, pp. 139-159
History, Social Divisions and Public Goods in Rural India
A. Banerjee, L. Iyer and R. Somanathan
2004
History, Institutions and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India
A. Banerjee and L. Iyer
October 2004
What do banks (not) do
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
September 2004
Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Credit Constraints Using a Directed Lending Program
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
August 2004
Banking Reform in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
June 2004
Bank Financing in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
October 2003
Top Indian Incomes, 1956-2000
A. Banerjee and T. Piketty
June 2003
Strategy For Economics Reform in West Bengal
A. Banerjee, P. Bardhan, K. Basu, M. Ghatak and et al.
October 2002, Economic and Political Weekly of India, Oct. 12, 2002
The Uses of Economic Theory: Against a Purely Positive Interpretation of Theoretical Results
A. Banerjee
May 2002
A Corporate Balance-Sheet Approach to Currency Crises
P. Aghion, P. Bacchetta and A. Banerjee
November 2001
Caste, Community and Collective Action: The Political Economy of Public Good Provision in India
A. Banerjee and R. Somanathan
September 2001
Herd Behavior and the Reward for Originality
A. Banerjee
Unpublished Mimeo, May 1989
On Frequent Flyer Programs and other Loyalty-Inducing Economic Arrangements
A. Banerjee and L. Summers
Harvard University Discussion Paper, 1337, September, 1987
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
. He is currently the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. Banerjee is a co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab is an academic center located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics which is dedicated to evaluating the impact of anti-poverty programs through randomized controlled trials similar to those used in medical research...
(along with economists Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo is a French economist, currently the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also co-founder and the Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab...
and Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He was hired with tenure by Harvard in 2004 after having spent six years at MIT, first as a junior faculty member and then as a full professor. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and conducts research on...
) and a Research Affiliate of Innovations for Poverty Action, a New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
based research outfit dedicated to creating and evaluating solutions to social and international development problems, and a Member of the Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty
Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty
The ' is a private economic research consortium dedicated to studying the interaction of financial systems and poverty, using a variety of economic approaches in a range of developing countries....
. He is also the recipient of the inaugural Infosys Prize
Infosys Prize
The Infosys Prize is an annual award that recognizes outstanding contributions by scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists in India. By recognizing and rewarding extraordinary accomplishments, the Infosys Prize aims to elevate the prestige of pure and applied sciences research in...
in the category of Social Sciences (Economics).
Early life
Abhijit Banerjee was born in KolkataKolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
to Dipak Banerjee, Professor and Head of Department of Economics, Presidency College, Calcutta and Nirmala Banerjee, Professor of Economics, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta is an autonomous research centre devoted to the research and advancement of the social sciences in South Asia...
.
He attended South Point School and Presidency College, Calcutta
Presidency College, Kolkata
Presidency University, Kolkata, formerly Hindu College and Presidency College, is a unitary, state aided university, located in Kolkata, West Bengal. and one of the premier institutes of learning of liberal arts and sciences in India. In 2002 it was ranked number one by the weekly news magazine...
, where he completed his B.Sc degree in Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
in 1981. Later, he completed his M.A. in Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Jawaharlal Nehru University, also known as JNU, is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. It is mainly a research oriented postgraduate University with approximately 5,500 students and a faculty strength of around 550.-History:...
, New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
in 1983. Later he went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1988. The subject of his doctoral thesis is "Essays in Information Economics".
Career
Abhijit Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMassachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. Prior to joining MIT, he taught at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
.
His work focuses on development economics
Development economics
Development Economics is a branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low-income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic growth and structural change but also on improving the potential for the mass of the population, for example,...
. Together with Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo is a French economist, currently the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also co-founder and the Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab...
, Michael Kremer
Michael Kremer
Michael Robert Kremer is a development economist and is currently the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Presidential Faculty Fellowship, and was named a Young Global...
, John List
John A. List
John August List is The Homer J. Livingston Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming in 1996...
and Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He was hired with tenure by Harvard in 2004 after having spent six years at MIT, first as a junior faculty member and then as a full professor. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and conducts research on...
, he has proposed field experiments as an important methodology to discover causal relationships in economics.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 2004. He was also honored with the Infosys Prize 2009 in the Social Sciences category of Economics.
Publications
- Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global PovertyPoor EconomicsPoor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty is a non-fiction book by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, both professors of Economics at MIT. The book reports on the effectiveness of solutions to global poverty using a evidence-based randomized control trial approach...
(with Esther DufloEsther DufloEsther Duflo is a French economist, currently the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also co-founder and the Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab...
), PublicAffairsPublicAffairsPublicAffairs is an imprint of the Perseus Books Group, an American book publishing company located in New York City. From PublicAffairs' web site:...
, New York, 2011. ISBN 978-1-610-39040-8 - Making Aid Work, The MIT Press, A Boston Review Book, 2007. ISBN 978-0-262-02615-4
The Miracle of Micro nance? Evidence From a Randomized Evaluation
June 2010
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster and Cynthia Kinnan
Targeting the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia
May 2010
Abhijit Banerjee, Vivi Alatas, Rema Hanna, Benjamin Olken and Julia Tobias
The Shape of Temptation: Impications for the Economic Lives of the Poor
April 2010
Abhijit Banerjee and Sendhil Mullainathan
Giving Credit Where it is Due
March 2010
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Improving Health Care Delivery in India
November 2009
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Marry for What? Caste and Selection in Modern India
2009
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Maitreesh Ghatak and Jeanne Lafortune
The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster and Cynthia Kinnan
May 2009
Parochial Politics: Ethnic Perferences and Politician Corruption
Abhijit Banerjee and Rohini Pande
2009
Corruption
Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna and Sendhil Mullainathan
February 2009
Why Does Missallocation Persist?
Abhijit Banerjee and Benjamin Moll
February 2009
A Capitalist Knows Who To Call
A. Banerjee
2008, M. Kinsley, Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Other Economic Leaders, pp.161-165.
Why fighting poverty is hard
September 2008
Abhijit Banerjee
Big Answers for Big Questions: The Presumption of Growth Policy
Abhijit Banerjee
September 2008
The Experimental Approach to Development Economics
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
September 2008
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs:Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India
Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, Stuti Khemani
August 2008
Mandated Empowerment: Handing Antipoverty Policy Back to the Poor?
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
June 2008
Why Has Unemployment Risen in the New South Africa
Abhijit Banerjee, Sebastian Galiani, Jim Levinsohn, Zoe McLaren and Ingrid Woolard
June 2008
Making Aid Work
Abhijit Banerjee and Ruimin He
May 2008
Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Creit Constraints Using a Directed Lending Program
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
May 2008
Improving Immunization Coverage in Rural India: A Clustered Randomized Controlled Evaluation of Immunization Campaigns with and without Incentives
May 2010
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster and Dhruva Kothari
Limited Attention and Income Distribution
Abhijit Banerjee and Sendhil Mullainthan
January 2008
Aging and Death under a Dollar a Day
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
December 2007
What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes Around the World?
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
December 2007
Public Action for Public Goods
A. Banerjee, L. Iyer and R. Somanathan
September 2006, Handbook of Development Economics, Vo. 4
The Economic Lives of the Poor
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
April 2006, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vo. 21(1), pp. 141-167
Updated Table (March 17, 2008) for Economic Lives of the Poor and What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes Around the World?
with Esther Duflo
Comment on Buiter-Patel
April 2006, India Policy Forum, Vo. 2
The Paradox of Indian Growth: A comment on Kochar et al.
A. Banerjee
July 2006, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vo. 53(5), pp. 1021-1026
The Political Economy of Public Goods: Some Evidence from India
A. Banerjee and R. Somanathan
April 2006
Growth Theory through the Lens of Development Economics
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
December 2005, Published: Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 1a. Amserdam: Elsevier, pp. 473-552
Remedying Education Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole, E. Duflo and L. Linden
December 2005, NBER Working paper 11904
Addressing Absence
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
May 2005, Published: Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vo. 20 (1), pp. 117-132
Bank Financing in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
2005, India’s and China’s Recent Experience with Reform and Growth, Wanda Tseng and David Cowen, eds.
Bank Financing in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
2005, India’s and China’s Recent Experience with Reform and Growth, Wanda Tseng and David Cowen, eds.
Inequality and Investment
A. Banerjee
December 2004
Notes Toward a Theory of Industrialization in the Developing World
A. Banerjee
October 2004, Marjit, S. and N. Banerjee (Eds.) Development, Displacement and Disparity: India in the Last Quarter of the Century, pp. 139-159
History, Social Divisions and Public Goods in Rural India
A. Banerjee, L. Iyer and R. Somanathan
2004
History, Institutions and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India
A. Banerjee and L. Iyer
October 2004
What do banks (not) do
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
September 2004
Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Credit Constraints Using a Directed Lending Program
A. Banerjee and E. Duflo
August 2004
Banking Reform in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
June 2004
Bank Financing in India
A. Banerjee, S. Cole and E. Duflo
October 2003
Top Indian Incomes, 1956-2000
A. Banerjee and T. Piketty
June 2003
Strategy For Economics Reform in West Bengal
A. Banerjee, P. Bardhan, K. Basu, M. Ghatak and et al.
October 2002, Economic and Political Weekly of India, Oct. 12, 2002
The Uses of Economic Theory: Against a Purely Positive Interpretation of Theoretical Results
A. Banerjee
May 2002
A Corporate Balance-Sheet Approach to Currency Crises
P. Aghion, P. Bacchetta and A. Banerjee
November 2001
Caste, Community and Collective Action: The Political Economy of Public Good Provision in India
A. Banerjee and R. Somanathan
September 2001
Herd Behavior and the Reward for Originality
A. Banerjee
Unpublished Mimeo, May 1989
On Frequent Flyer Programs and other Loyalty-Inducing Economic Arrangements
A. Banerjee and L. Summers
Harvard University Discussion Paper, 1337, September, 1987