The 2015 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences - Angus Deaton

Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, has played an important role in transforming the field of development economics from a largely theoretical exercise to an empirical one. Across different topics, his work has built on microeconomic foundations and provided tools to analyse aggregate behaviour and patterns in the aggregate data. His early work built the "almost ideal demand system" that is still being used to construct price indices, estimate effects of economic policy and compare living standards over time and space. He has made seminal contributions to the microfoundations of the permanent income hypothesis, has studied the link between nutrition and income, and has studied how gender discrimination might affect household consumption. More recently he has been examined methodological questions about household surveys and poverty estimation in developing countries, and has been a strong critic of the recent trend towards field experiments in development economics. His contributions are too many to discuss in detail; the lecture will focus on his more recent work.