Amartya Sen said I'm very happy and delighted that Abhijit Banerjee along with others have been awarded.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Monday said he was "very very happy and delighted" over Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee jointly winning the Nobel in Economics.

Amartya Sen had won the same award in 1998 for his contribution to welfare economics. Speaking to PTI from Boston, Amartya Sen said I'm very very happy and delighted that Abhijit Banerjee along with others have been awarded the Nobel for Economics, he told PTI.

58-year-old Abhijit Banerjee bagged the coveted prize jointly with his wife Esther Duflo and another economist Michael Kremer for his "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".

I think that the prize has been given to the most competent persons, Amartya Sen said.

Abhijit Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

86-year-old Amartya Sen currently serves as professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University, from where Abhijit Banerjee received his PhD in 1988. Both of them had been students of the famed Presidency College, now a university, in the city during their undergraduate years.