econ

Nobel-winning economists Duflo and Banerjee will leave  US for Switzerland

spiderman

The move by Banerjee and Duflo to Zurich is probably less about politics and more about the incentives and lifestyle such a university can offer. Switzerland has the resources to fund long-term research without the political noise that US academics often complain about. That matters in development economics because their work depends on time consuming field studies in multiple countries.  


They show that poor people do not always lack ambition or rationality  often they strategically invest in festivals or other social occasions because maintaining networks is a survival strategy in uncertain economies. The point is that they try to understand human behavior in context rather than treat it like an abstract equation.  

