It goes to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for work on field experiments in the economics of (under-) development. Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution has coverage, starting here.
I am currently drafting an essay suggesting Edward Leamer for the Nobel Prize. Last week, I wrote the following paragraph:
The significance of what Angrist and Pischke termed the “credibility revolution in empirical economics” can be seen in the John Bates Clark Medal awards given to researchers who participated in that revolution. Between 1995 and 2015, of the fourteen Clark Medal winners, by my estimate at least seven (Card, Levitt, Duflo, Finkelstein, Chetty, Gentzkow, and Fryer) are known for their empirical work using research designs intended to avoid the problems that Leamer highlighted with the multiple-regression approach.
This year’s Nobel, by including Duflo, would seem to serve to strengthen my case for Leamer.
Compare David Henderson, writing in WSJ:
“What’s striking about the award is that the Nobel committee gave it to the three economists specifically for addressing ‘smaller, more manageable questions’—such as how to improve educational outcomes and child health in poor countries—rather than for big ideas. Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo (a married couple) explicitly reject thinking about big questions in their 2011 book, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.
To be sure, breaking down big issues into smaller questions can sometimes allow quicker and more-direct solutions to unwieldy problems. Yet in the case of global poverty, economists actually do have pretty good ideas about how to fight the problem on a macro scale. Namely, immigration and economic growth, which are by far the most reliable ways to improve the quality of life among the world’s poor.”
Excerpt at EconLog blogpost at the link below:
https://www.econlib.org/the-latest-nobel-prize-in-economics/
Excellent post on the limits of small scale field tests by Peter Dorman over at Angry Bear : https://angrybearblog.com/2019/10/a-nobel-for-the-randomistas.html
Leamer was not impressed with Angrist https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.2.31