The 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be awarded on Monday.
ADVERTISEMENTThe 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded on Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their work to alleviate global poverty.
Banerjee and Duflo are a married couple and are both professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Kremer is a professor at Harvard University.
"The essence of our research is, our goal, is to make sure the fight against poverty is based on scientific evidence," said Esther Duflo, the second woman to win the prize, over the phone at the press conference. She is also the youngest person to win the award.
"Showing that it is possible for a woman to succeed and to be recognised for success I hope is going to inspire many, many other women to continue working and many other men to give them the respect they deserve," she said.
The prize was first established by Sweden's central bank in 1968 in the memory of Alfred Nobel who founded the Nobel Prize.
The economic sciences prize is the last Nobel Prize to be awarded in 2019 after five other prizes were awarded last week, ending with the Nobel Peace Prize being given to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for his efforts to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring country Eritrea.
Nobel laureates in 2019 win 9.0 million Swedish kronor (€829,000) per prize.
Only one woman had previously been awarded the prize in economic sciences: Elinor Ostrom won in 2009 for showing how natural resources can be managed jointly without regulation in a way that is "both economically and ecologically sustainable", according to the Nobel Prize website.
Last year's prize in economic sciences was awarded jointly to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer "for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis".