Nobel in Economics awarded to Indian-origin Abhijit Banerjee, two others

The Academy honored the economists for their experiment-based approach to "obtain reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty."

Their work revolved around taking major poverty-related issues and then breaking them down into smaller, more manageable questions, which can be addressed properly.

For example, in order to improve children's health, their method looks at elements like education, credit availability, and health systems.

Banerjee, 58, worked with Duflo and Kremer to demonstrate the approach and showed that smaller questions can be best answered with carefully designed experiments among the people who are most affected.

Notably, before coming up with this, he had studied at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Harvard University, where he got his PhD in 1988.

In the mid-1990s, Kremer applied this approach and tested a range of interventions that improved school results in western Kenya.

Then, Banerjee and Duflo performed similar studies to tackle issues prevailing in other parts of the world.

"As a direct result of one of their studies, more than five million Indian children have benefited from effective programs of remedial tutoring in school," the Academy said.

Interestingly, Duflo is just the second woman to be awarded the Nobel for Economics in 50 years. She is also the youngest person to receive the Nobel Economic Prize.

"It's incredibly humbling," the 46-year-old told The Guardian.

She went on to say, "It is a movement that is much larger than the three of us."

As one would expect, Banerjee's Indian connection set social media abuzz, with several users saying how proud they are of him.

Jumping on the bandwagon, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted, "Hearty congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee, an alumnus of South Point School & Presidency College Kolkata, for winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. Another Bengali has done the nation proud. We are overjoyed."