Michael Kremer is Director of the Development Innovation Lab at the University of Chicago, where he is a University Professor in Economics in the College and the Harris School of Public Policy. He is the joint winner of Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Economics Nobel Prize) 2019, for an “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.
Kremer’s work focuses on innovation, including in education, health, water, finance and agriculture in developing countries; he has also done work in the application of behavioral economics, and political economy to development economics issues. He has written multiple papers on incentives around innovation, including on patent buy-outs, Advance Market Commitments, and approaches to funding social innovation.
An innovator and social entrepreneur, Kremer remains active in translating his academic work into program s that have impacted millions of lives around the world. His work on Advance Market Commitments for vaccines was instrumental in the development of a new pneumococcal vaccine, tackling a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality. The vaccine has now been rolled out in 60 developing countries. Drawing on his work on school-based deworming, he co-founded Deworm the World. As part of Evidence Action, it now brings deworming to over 150 million children annually. His work on safe drinking water led to the Dispensers for Safe Water Program, which reaches 4 million people via the NGO Evidence Action. He is a co-founder and board member of Precision Agriculture for Development, which leverages digital technology to improve productivity and incomes for small-holder farmers in developing countries. He founded WorldTeach, which placed more than 7,500 volunteers as teachers in developing countries from 1987 to 2019.
Kremer is a co-founder and serves as Scientific Director of USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), an open, tiered, evidence-based fund that supports innovation for development.