Do the winners of 2019 economics Nobel focus too much on micro welfare?

Immigration and growth would help more than addressing the winners' 'manageable questions.'

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will award the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Kremer of Harvard “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” The award reveals a deepening fault line among economists about how best to fight poverty.

What’s striking about the award is that the Nobel committee gave it to the three economists specifically for addressing “smaller, more manageable questions”—such as how to improve educational outcomes and child health in poor countries—rather than for big ideas. Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo (a