This year's Nobel Prize for economics has gone to a pioneering poverty expert. That arguably represents both high praise and a push for the global efforts to eliminate extreme poverty, a goal that the winner isn't "blindly optimistic" about.

For representatives who will attend the Global Poverty Reduction and Development Forum in Beijing on Friday to share their experience in combating poverty, it pays to have a close look at how Angus Deaton, a British-born economist at Princeton University, has deepened understanding about poverty at the very basic level.

In a year when the global poverty rate is set to fall below 10 percent for first time, such a top prize for an economist who has spent decades studying what determines poverty and how people make their consumption decisions could certainly amount to a pat on the back for all those who have long engaged in the hard war against poverty.