Best Development Economics

Angus Deaton is a British-American economist born in 1945 who was awarded the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized his analysis of individual consumption, poverty, and welfare across households and countries. He is well known for developing...

Abhijit Banerjee is an Indian-American economist at MIT who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize for pioneering the use of randomized controlled trials to evaluate anti-poverty interventions in developing countries.

W. Arthur Lewis was a Saint Lucian-born British economist whose work helped shape modern development economics. He shared the 1979 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Theodore Schultz for research on economic development, particularly the problems of developing countries. His dual-sector...

Michael Kremer is an American economist at the University of Chicago who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize for independently developing field experiments to evaluate development programs, particularly in Kenya.

Albert Hirschman (1915–2012) was a German-American economist who spent his later career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He made major contributions to political economy and development economics, notably advocating for a strategy of unbalanced growth in developing nations. Hirschma...

Melissa Dell is an American economist at Harvard University whose research combines development economics, economic history, and political economy. She uses detailed historical records and geocoded data to examine how institutions, coercive labor systems, conflict, and state capacity can produce per...

Raúl Prebisch (1901–1986) was an Argentine economist whose work became foundational to Latin American structuralist economics and dependency theory. He formulated the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis, which argues that the terms of trade for primary commodity exporters deteriorate over time relative to in...

Benjamin Olken is an American development economist and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He serves as the director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a global research center focused on poverty alleviation. His empirical research heavily utilizes ran...

Edward Miguel is an American development economist and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves as the faculty director of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). His research utilizes empirical methods and field experiments to analyze economic development, healt...

Rohini Pande is an Indian-American development economist and the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics at Yale University. She also serves as the director of the Economic Growth Center, where her research centers on the role of political and economic institutions in shaping development outcomes....

Jeffrey D. Sachs is an American economist and professor at Columbia University whose work concerns economic development, global poverty, public health, debt, and sustainable development. He advised governments during major market reforms, including stabilization programs in Bolivia and Poland, and l...

Christopher Blattman is an American economist and political scientist currently serving as a professor at the University of Chicago. His academic work primarily centers on development economics, where he utilizes field experiments to study the root causes of violence, crime, and armed conflict. He f...

Nancy Qian is a Chinese-American economist and a professor at Northwestern University, where she specializes in development economics and economic history. Her rigorous empirical research often utilizes historical data to analyze the socioeconomic trajectories of modern China, including the long-ter...

Celso Furtado (1920–2004) was a Brazilian economist regarded as one of the founders of Latin American structuralism and dependency theory. He worked extensively with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL/ECLAC), where he helped articulate the view that str...

Dean Karlan is an American development economist who applies randomized controlled trials to evaluate the impact of microfinance, savings programs, and global poverty interventions. He is a professor of economics at Northwestern University and previously taught at Yale University. Karlan co-founded...

Asim Ijaz Khwaja is a Pakistani-American economist who serves as a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research utilizes field experiments to investigate economic development, focusing on topics such as credit markets, education quality, and governance in low-income countri...

Hans Singer (1910–2006) was a German-British development economist who spent much of his career with the United Nations. He is best known for co-developing, with Raúl Prebisch, the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis, which holds that the terms of trade for primary commodity exporters tend to decline over ti...

Ragnar Nurkse (1907–1959) was an Estonian-American economist who taught at Columbia University and is regarded as a significant figure in mid-20th-century development economics. He introduced the concept of the "vicious circle of poverty," arguing that low income leads to low savings, which limits c...

Walt Whitman Rostow (1916–2003) was an American economist, political theorist, and government official who served as National Security Advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He is best known for his 1960 book, "The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto," which outlined a five-stage m...

This innovative work challenges conventional economic models by demonstrating how religious beliefs and values profoundly shape human behavior and drive social action. It argues that understanding 'sacred economies' systems of exchange and cooperation based on faith-inspired principles is essentia...