Celebrating Angus Deaton in 7 Tweets (Or, Why you should read ‘The Great Escape’)

Adil Najam in LinkedIn Pulse:

I was delighted when I heard that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences had decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2015 to Prof. Angus Deaton – Scottish born, Cambridge University educated, Professor at Princeton Univeristy. They announced that it was “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare”.

Indeed. As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences pointed out in their citation: “More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced [our understanding of individual consumption choices]. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.”

This is very true. His main contributions to economics have been improving the data and the analysis, especially at the microeconomic (household) level, that shape our understanding of poverty and of inequality. But what endears him even more to someone like me is the optimism that he derives from this empiricity. Specially, since so many empiricists derive anything but that. This is best captured and represented in his magisterial tome, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton Univeristy Press, 2013).

More here.