Faculty Director Ted Miguel’s work contributes to Nobel prize-winning research | The Daily Californian

The Daily Californian interviewed Ted Miguel about the recent Nobel Prize in Economics Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer, and Abhijit Banerjee.

“A groundbreaking experimental research method that began in a collaboration between UC Berkeley economics professor Edward Miguel and Michael Kremer — a current Harvard University economics professor and Miguel’s former doctoral adviser — led to the awarding of a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday.

The prize was awarded to Kremer and Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professors Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences winner announcement video. While Miguel himself was not awarded a Nobel Prize, Miguel and Kremer’s project was one of the first to use the new research method.

Some of the research recognized is Miguel and Kremer’s work in Kenya during the mid-1990s studying the educational impacts of providing deworming drugs to children in a highly infected area.“We certainly did not think about the Nobel prize — at least I didn’t,” Miguel said. “We did know that it was new. It was groundbreaking.”

According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the approach used by Miguel and Kremer helps to identify effective ways of reducing global poverty by defining specific subquestions of a broader inquiry. These smaller questions are then answered through field studies and randomized controlled experiments.”

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