Nobel Prize for Economics for practical work on poverty

Two MIT professors, who are husband and wife, and a Harvard professor are sharing the Nobel Prize for Economics because of work they have done on global poverty. By examining things like educational improvements and preventative methods for health care and how those can improve national economies, the work these three have done the past couple decades have been shown to help millions of people, especially in some of the poorest nations in Asia and Africa. Some of the work was actually done in the field, testing policies to see what did and did not work, and this more scientific approach often cannot be done in advanced economic models.

Esther Duflo, one of the winners from MIT, is only the second woman to win an economics Nobel, and is also the youngest to win it at age 46.