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Updated: Oct 14, 2019 21:17 IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday congratulated Indian-origin economist Professor Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer on winning the Nobel Prize for economics.

Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer were awarded the 2019 Nobel prize for economics on Monday for their approach to alleviate global poverty.

“Congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee on being conferred the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He has made notable contributions in the field of poverty alleviation,” Modi tweeted.

The Prime Minister also congratulated the 58-year-old Banerjee’s French-American wife Esther Duflo and the US’ Michael Kremer who also bagged the award.

“I also congratulate Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for winning the prestigious Nobel,” he tweeted.

The trio was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”

“The research conducted by the 2019 Economic Sciences laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research,” said a tweet from the official handle of the Nobel Prize committee.

The Mumbai-born economist who studied at the University of Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, received his PhD from Harvard University in 1988. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).