Important Facts For Prelims
Nobel Laureate to Spread Awareness of Covid-19
- 03 Apr 2020
- 2 min read
Why in News
Recently, the West Bengal government roped in Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee to spread awareness of COVID-19.
- Abhijit Banerjee along with his wife economist Esther Duflo have agreed to help the West Bengal government.
Key Points
- Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo along with Michael Kremer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”
- The experiment-based approach of the three laureates has transformed development economics and turned it into a “flourishing field of research”.
- The three adopted an evidence-based approach to apply theory to real-life situations using randomised trials and assessing the outcomes.
- The approach is derived from the concept of clinical trials in the pharmaceuticals industry.
- The effort was to understand the impact of interventions to achieve desirable outcomes.
- Example: The experiment that Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo carried out in Rajasthan some years ago would explain the concept better.
- Despite immunisation being free, women were not bringing in their children for the vaccination shot.
- The two economists decided to give a bag of pulses free to women who brought their babies for vaccination. Word soon spread and the rate of immunisation shot up in the region.
- One of their studies also resulted in benefiting 5 million children in India through programmes of remedial tutoring in schools.
