Two economists borrowed medicine's drug trials to test what actually fights poverty

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo pioneered running randomized controlled trials in development economics, the same method used to test new drugs, to see which anti-poverty interventions actually worked rather than just sounded plausible. Testing programs like deworming pills, microloans and cash transfers against real control groups overturned long-held assumptions and reshaped how governments and charities spend billions of aid dollars.

— Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Poor Economics — 2011; Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, 2019
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