Political Economy and Economic Development 

offered by MIT University

Abhijit Banerjee is the winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Harvard University. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. Banerjee is a past president of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. He is the recipient of many awards, including the inaugural Infosys Prize in 2009, and has been an honorary advisor to many organizations including the World Bank and the government of India.

Benjamin A. Olken is the Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics at MIT. His research focuses on the public sector in developing countries, including work on social safety nets, taxation, and governance. He has worked extensively in Indonesia for over 20 years, as well as in other contexts. Olken earned his PhD in 2004 from Harvard University. He is a Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Scientific Director of J-PAL Southeast Asia and previously served as a Co-Chair of J-PAL's Governance Initiative. He is also the Editor of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and the Co-Director of the NBER Development Economics Program.