Abhijit Banerjee, 44, Economist

Beginning in 1980, economics experienced a golden age of theorising. A number of landmark papers and plenty of theoretical innovations marked the subject. This period lasted until about 2005. After that an empirical revolution broke out in the discipline where the combination of data analysis, fuelled by the availability of huge datasets and innovative techniques of handling this information, made theory appear antediluvian. An Indian economist, Abhijit Banerjee is one of the leading lights of transformation. Publicly, he is known for his best-selling 2011 book Poor Economics (co-authored with Esther Duflo), but the immense range of his work, from economic theory to making Randomised Controlled Trials a rage in social science, makes him unique in a discipline that prizes specialised silos. Currently, he is the Ford Foundation Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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