The Nobel economists do practical work to improve lives – and might just revive their tarnished profession

There is something going on here that is more than just recognising, celebrating and rewarding great work. It is the wider lesson for the study of economics

Economists are the butt of so many jokes – and can get things so wrong – that is it a relief to be able to write about something they are doing that is unquestionably useful to society. It is the work of the three winners of the Nobel prize in economic sciences, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer.

Banerjee and Duflo (who worked together for many years and married in 2015) are at MIT, while Kremer is at Harvard – but what they do is completely different from the pursuits of most academic economists at top-flight institutions.

They are development economists, studying how the lives of poor people in the emerging world might be made better. But instead of creating theories or examining published data, they carry out randomised trials to see what works.