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Angus Deaton wins Nobel prize for economics for consumption poverty analysis
British-American economist Angus Deaton, who today was named this year’s victor of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, stands out in the rarefied world of academic economics because of his insistence that in addressing problems like poverty and inequality, researchers need to, in a sense, get their hands dirty.
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Angus Deaton, a Princeton professor renowned for his meticulousness, has won the 2015 Nobel Prize for economics. Deaton said the influx stems from decades of inequalities between rich and poor countries.
Deaton joins a long list of Princeton scholars awarded the Nobel Prize, including 10 current members of the faculty, university officials said.
ZARROLI: So Deaton has taken a much more nuanced approach to economic statistics, probing deep into the numbers in a way that differs from traditional measurements. On the process, Angus Deaton is very committed to the idea that public policy should be an outcome of democratic practice, as opposed, say, to professional expertise or randomised controlled trials.
Deaton contributed in many other important ways to the empirical revolution in econ. He pioneered the use of household surveys as a way of working around the limitations of government data-collection agencies.
“I was surprised and delighted”, he said.
“To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices”, the committee that awarded the prize said in a statement.
In his most recent book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality, Deaton argued that foreign aid from western governments has done more harm than good to developing nations. “Those people who have been left behind want a better life, and that is putting enormous pressure on the boundaries between the poor world and the rich”. He had been in the running for the prize several times in past years.
Cecilia Rouse, dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and worldwide Affairs, called him a devoted teacher and mentor to generations of students.
Deaton is by far best known for his work on understanding poverty and consumption in developing economies.
The economics award is basically a slap in the face of anyone who thinks that the world is in a downward spiral, because Deaton is as optimistic and rigorous as they come.
The 69-year-old Deaton was born in Edinburgh in 1945 and holds both US and British citizenship.
Deaton follows in a distinguished tradition which emphasises data-driven policy analysis.
Deaton also linked inequality and slower economic growth to a “terrifying increase” in middle-aged mortality in the United States, which he is now studying.
Last year, French economist Jean Tirole won the prestigious award for research on market power and regulation. But it was added in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank and is presented with the others and carries the same prize money. His 2009 study titled “Income inequality and mortality in US cities: Weighing the evidence” and co-authored with Darren Lubotsky of the University of Illinois at Chicago investigated the link between age-adjusted mortality and income equality over American cities and states.
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Unlike the other five annual Nobel prizes, the economics one was not established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, although like the Physics and Chemistry prizes it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.