Podcasts Education Self-Improvement Conversations with Tyler Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India

Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India

Published: Dec. 30, 2019, 1:04 p.m.

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Long before Abhijit Banerjee won the 2019 economics Nobel with Michael Kremer and Esther Duflo, he was a fellow graduate student at Harvard with Tyler. For Tyler, Abhijit is one of the brightest economic minds he\u2019s ever met, and \u201ca brilliant theorist who decided the future was with empirical work.\u201d But according to Abhijit, theory and practice go hand in hand: the real benefit of a randomized control trial isn\u2019t getting unbiased estimates, he says, but in testing hypotheses borne out of theory.

Abhijit joined Tyler to discuss his unique approach to economics, including thoughts on premature deindustrialization, the intrinsic weakness of any charter city, where the best classical Indian music is being made today, why he prefers making Indian sweets to French sweets, the influence of English intellectual life in India, the history behind Bengali leftism, the best Indian regional cuisine, why experimental economics is underrated, the reforms he\u2019d make to traditional graduate economics training, how his mother\u2019s passion inspires his research, how many consumer loyalty programs he\u2019s joined, and more.

Read a\xa0full transcript\xa0enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded December 2nd, 2019

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