Michael Kremer

Michael Kremer is one of the founding architects of modern development economics — a 2019 Nobel Laureate whose lifelong commitment to understanding and alleviating global poverty has produced some of the most consequential research in the history of the social sciences. University Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and Director of the Development Innovation Lab at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, Kremer has spent more than three decades translating rigorous academic inquiry into innovations that have reached hundreds of millions of people across the developing world.

Nobel Prize speaker Michael Kremer shared the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo for pioneering the use of randomized controlled trials in development economics. The Nobel Committee recognized how their experimental methods — borrowed from clinical medicine and applied to schools, health clinics, and farming communities across Africa and Asia — transformed the field’s ability to answer the most pressing question in global development: what actually works? Kremer’s early fieldwork in Kenya, which began during a teaching stint there in 1985, seeded a methodology that now entirely dominates development economics research worldwide.

The real-world impact of Kremer’s work is measurable in lives. He co-designed the Advance Market Commitment (AMC) framework for vaccines — a legally binding pledge by governments to purchase vaccines at a viable price if they meet efficacy standards — which catalyzed the development of a pneumococcal vaccine now deployed in 60 countries and credited with saving an estimated 700,000 lives. He co-founded the Deworm the World Initiative, which has delivered 1.8 billion deworming treatments to children globally. And he co-founded Precision Development (PxD), a nonprofit using digital technology and SMS-based agricultural advice to reach smallholder farmers at scale, now serving millions of users at a cost of under two dollars per person per year.

Innovation as Institution: Building the Infrastructure of Evidence

What distinguishes Kremer from many economists is his compulsion not merely to publish findings, but to build the organizations and institutions capable of acting on them. As Faculty Director of the Development Economics Center at the University of Chicago — and previously as Scientific Director of USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures, an evidence-based innovation fund he co-founded that has generated an estimated $17 in social benefit for every dollar invested — Kremer has created durable infrastructure for translating research into policy at scale. He and his Nobel co-recipients donated their prize money to the Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics, ensuring the work outlasts any individual career.

As a speaker, Michael Kremer brings to the stage the rare credibility of a scientist who has operated at every level — from sitting with farmers in rural Kenya to advising the G20 on pandemic preparedness. His talks challenge audiences to think seriously about evidence, innovation, and the institutional designs that make transformative change possible. Senior leaders in government, finance, healthcare, and global business leave with a fundamentally sharper understanding of how to evaluate what works — and why that discipline is the most powerful tool available for solving complex problems.