By APD writer Rishika Chauhan

Abhijit Banerjee, an Indian-American economist recently won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics.

Currently, he is a Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US and has previously taught at Harvard University and Princeton University.

Banerjee, received the Nobel prize along with fellow economists Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. The three were given the prize for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, is 58 years old and was born in Mumbai in India. He studied at Presidency College, Calcutta, and completed his masters in Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi in 1983.

He finished his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University in 1988.

Banerjee has also established the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab along with economists Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, which conducts research to alleviate global poverty.

In 2013, he was chosen by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to update the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)