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STOCKHOLM: Abhijit Banarjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have been jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced Monday.

The announcement was made by the academy’s secretary-general, Göran K. Hansson.

“This year’s Laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty,” the academy said in a statement.

BREAKING NEWS:
The 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/SuJfPoRe2N

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 14, 2019

Their key innovation has been in breaking the issues of global poverty into smaller questions that can be more easily addressed, the academy said.

Banarjee and Duflo are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Banarjee is Indian-American and Duflo, who is French-American, is only the second woman ever to receive the economics Nobel. The two economists are married to each other.

The prize, officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank. Monday’s award is the 51st Nobel in Economics.

The prize this year is worth 9 million Swedish crown ($915,300).

(Agencies)