The 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded jointly to the economist couple Abhijit Banerjee (b. 1961), Esther Duflo-Banerjee (b. 1972) and their colleague Michael Kremer (b. 1964) "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Banerjee and Duflo are the sixth married couple to jointly win a Nobel Prize. The pressed release of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted: Their key contribution to economics is the usage of randomized controlled trials (RCT) in development economics.