Riksbank Prize 2019 aka Nobel

[The Minsky Moment]

Good choice this year - Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer

+ they are still relatively young and in their prime as opposed to getting a "lifetime achievement" award - the prize money can help fund future work
+ the work is in a very highly impactful policy relevant area - poverty alleviation
+ their work often involves the use of field experiments and natural experiments as opposed to pure statistical models

Early reports have a lot of talk about Duflo's gender - kind of funny as my perception is that she is the biggest "name" in the group, having won the JB Clark Medal in 2010 for young economists.

Duflo's fellow Franco-American and former JB Clark winner Emmanuel Saez would also have been a good candidate although I suspect his candidacy would raise the tricky question of whether Piketty should be a joint winner.

[The Minsky Moment]

True story: back in the early 90s, as a lowly undergrad I attended the presentation and oral peer review of a draft paper on population dynamics over human history.  The presenter was really put on the hot seat and faced some very tough questions about methods and data.  However, the paper as revised was ultimately published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. 

The (then) young author of the paper was Michael Kremer.