Professor Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003 he founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) with the objective of promoting randomized trials – similar to the ones used in medical research – to study antipoverty programs. Prof. Banerjee and his colleagues have a simple, but radical goal.
They want to overhaul development aid so that more of it is spent on programs that actually make a difference. In 2009, J-PAL won the BBVA Foundation “Frontier of Knowledge” award in the development cooperation category. Professor Banerjee has had a distinguished academic career. He studied Economics at the Presidency College in Calcutta and later at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.