Question

Who is the author of 'Good Economics for Hard Times'?

• A. Abhijith Banerjee and Esther Duflo
• B. Raghuram G. Rajan
• C. Sudipta Sarangi
• D. Kaushik Basu

Answer 1

Answer:

A. Abhijith Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Authors and Academic Background

• Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo are prominent economists affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
• They are the co-founders of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which focuses on evidence-based approaches to poverty alleviation.

Nobel Prize Recognition

• The authors were jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019.
• They shared the honor with Michael Kremer.
• The Nobel Committee recognized their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, which involves breaking down complex issues into smaller, manageable questions through randomized controlled trials.

Key Themes of the Work

• The book addresses critical global challenges such as immigration, trade wars, climate change, and inequality.
• It emphasizes the importance of empirical evidence and data-driven policy-making over traditional economic ideologies.
• The authors argue that economic policies should be grounded in the lived realities of people, particularly the poor, to be effective in hard times.

Other Notable Works

• The duo previously co-authored the influential book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011), which received the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.