Abhijit Banerjee, the Indian-American economist who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, is going to leave the US for Switzerland probably in the month of July 2026.
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (Wife), co-recipient of the Nobel Prize, will move to the University of Zurich to start the Lemann Center for Development, Education, and Public Policy. The centre is supported by a Swiss franc grant of 26 million from the Lemann Foundation.
Though, their shift is framed as part of their global academic engagement, it also overlaps with a wider institutional climate shift at MIT. As per multiple academic sources, faculty displeasure at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology raised after the university’s decision not to support a proposed collaboration linked to the Trump-era “Opportunity Zones” economic initiative, a policy intended to incentivize investment in underserved groups through tax breakdowns.
However, neither it was directly confirmed by Banerjee nor by Duflo, MIT faculty minutes and leaked discussions from inside forums in late 2024 show that key economics faculty, together with those involved in development economics, conflicts aligning with politically driven federal programs. MIT later stopped discussions related to various such partnerships, mentioning concerns over transparency, ethics, and academic freedom.
A Career Grounded in Poverty Research and Data
Banerjee was born in Mumbai in the year 1961. He studied at Presidency College, University of Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University, along with his PhD from Harvard University in 1988. His academic focus has long been on eliminating poverty through randomized controlled trials (RCTs), a method more shared in clinical science rather than in economics at the time.
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Banerjee co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT in the year 2003, which pioneered the use of RCTs to examine the real-world effectiveness of policies and social programs. J-PAL in more than 80 countries has influenced policymaking in areas such as health, education, and financial inclusion.
Continuity at MIT Despite Global Transition
In spite of his upcoming full-time role at the University of Zurich, Banerjee will uphold a part-time position at MIT in order to supervise the ongoing research at J-PAL. Esther Duflo is also expected to do the same.
Their mutual decision to expand to Switzerland echoes both a strategic academic move and what several analysts see as a wish to reposition global development research beyond a country centric academic framework.
The objective of the University of Zurich’s Lemann Centre is to become a major hub for evidence-based development policy in Europe along with the Global South. Through political debates in US academia gradually distressing institutional partnerships and funding, Banerjee’s move is being understood by some policy viewers as part of a larger academic response to shifting US political dynamics, mainly surrounding science, research autonomy, and global development priorities.
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