Three economists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University were awarded this year's Nobel Prize for their research on lifting people out of poverty. MIT professor Abhijit Banerjee, 58, who was born in India, and his wife Esther Duflo, who was born in France in 1972, they shared the prize with Harvard University economist Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." The research carried out by this year's laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty," said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. "In just two decades, his new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a burgeoning field of research," the entity added.