Economics Nobel timeline
beta
Every economics Nobel laureate since 1969, on a timeline you can pull out to see the decades or pull in to see each year. Choose a name to read who they are and what the prize was for.
Something went wrong while starting this tool. The information is all still on the page below, as a plain list. Reloading the page may fix it.
58 prizes and 101 laureates,1969 to 2026.Pull out to see every decade at once, or pull in to see one decade year by year. Choose any name to read about that person and their work.
1960s1 prize, 2 laureates
1969
- Ragnar FrischUniversity of Oslo
- Jan TinbergenThe Netherlands School of Economics
“for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes”
In plain English — written for this site
The first economics prize went to the two people who did most to turn economics into a measuring science. Ragnar Frisch coined the word “econometrics” — the use of statistics to test economic ideas against data — and built mathematical models of how an economy moves over time. Jan Tinbergen built the first models of entire national economies, for the Netherlands and the United States, and showed that a government needs at least as many separate policy tools as it has goals.
1970s10 prizes, 15 laureates
1970
- Paul A. SamuelsonMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
“for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science”
In plain English — written for this site
Paul Samuelson rebuilt much of economics on a common mathematical foundation, showing that problems as different as consumer choice, production and trade share the same underlying logic. His textbook, Economics, taught the subject to generations of students. His name is attached to results across the field, from how international trade affects wages to why public goods — things like street lighting that no one can be excluded from — tend to be underprovided by markets.
1971
- Simon KuznetsHarvard University
“for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development”
In plain English — written for this site
Simon Kuznets did much of the pioneering work behind national income accounts, the system that produces GDP figures. He then used long runs of historical data to describe how economies change as they grow: people move from farming into industry and services, and inequality, he suggested, first rises and then falls as incomes increase — an idea now known as the Kuznets curve.
1972
- John R. HicksAll Souls College
- Kenneth J. ArrowHarvard University
“for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory”
In plain English — written for this site
John Hicks and Kenneth Arrow were honoured for work on general equilibrium — how prices across all markets settle at once, rather than one market at a time — and on welfare economics, which asks when an economic outcome is good for society. Hicks’s IS-LM diagram became the standard way of teaching how interest rates and output interact. Arrow proved that no voting system can turn individual preferences into a consistent social ranking while meeting a short list of reasonable fairness conditions, a result known as Arrow’s impossibility theorem.
1973
- Wassily LeontiefHarvard University
“for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems”
In plain English — written for this site
Wassily Leontief invented the input-output table: a grid recording how much each industry buys from every other industry to produce its output. With it, one can trace how a change in demand in one sector ripples through the whole economy. Input-output tables remain a core part of national accounts today, including India’s supply and use tables.
1974
- Gunnar Myrdal
- Friedrich von Hayek
“for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena”
In plain English — written for this site
A deliberately contrasting pair. Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich von Hayek both did early work on money and business cycles, but drew opposite conclusions about the role of the state. Myrdal argued for active planning and the welfare state, and wrote a landmark study of race in the United States. Hayek argued that prices carry knowledge scattered across millions of people that no central planner could ever gather, which made him the leading critic of planned economies.
1975
- Leonid Vitaliyevich KantorovichAcademy of Sciences
- Tjalling C. KoopmansYale University
“for their contributions to the theory of optimum allocation of resources”
In plain English — written for this site
Leonid Kantorovich and Tjalling Koopmans worked out, independently, on either side of the Iron Curtain, how to allocate limited resources in the best possible way. Their method, now called linear programming, finds the best combination of inputs when there are many constraints at once — how to route shipments, schedule machines or plan production. Kantorovich developed it in 1939 for a Soviet plywood trust. Koopmans developed it for wartime shipping.
1976
- Milton FriedmanUniversity of Chicago
“for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy”
In plain English — written for this site
Milton Friedman argued that households base their spending on the income they expect over the long run, not on what they earn this year — the “permanent income” hypothesis. With Anna Schwartz he wrote a monetary history of the United States arguing that the Federal Reserve’s failure to stop the money supply collapsing turned a recession into the Great Depression. He also argued that there is no lasting trade-off between inflation and unemployment, and that policy works with long and unpredictable delays.
1977
- Bertil OhlinStockholm School of Economics
- James E. MeadeUniversity of Cambridge
“for their pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements”
In plain English — written for this site
Bertil Ohlin explained what a country trades by what it has in abundance: countries rich in labour export goods that need a lot of labour, and countries rich in capital export goods that need a lot of capital. James Meade showed how a government in an open economy can pursue two goals at once — full employment at home and a sustainable balance of payments with the rest of the world — and why each needs its own policy tool.
1978
- Herbert SimonCarnegie Mellon University
“for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations”
In plain English — written for this site
Herbert Simon challenged the assumption that people and organisations make perfectly rational choices. Real decision-makers have limited time, information and attention, so they rely on rules of thumb and settle for an option that is good enough — what he called “satisficing”. His idea of “bounded rationality” came from studying how decisions are actually made inside firms and public administrations.
1979
- Theodore W. SchultzUniversity of Chicago
- Sir Arthur LewisPrinceton University
“for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries”
In plain English — written for this site
The first prize for development economics. Arthur Lewis described how a poor economy grows as workers move from low-productivity farming into modern industry, with wages staying low until that surplus of rural labour runs out — the “Lewis turning point”. Theodore Schultz argued that traditional farmers are poor but not inefficient, and that the way out of poverty lies in investing in people — their education and health, which he called human capital — and in agricultural research.
1980s10 prizes, 10 laureates
1980
- Lawrence R. KleinUniversity of Pennsylvania
“for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies”
In plain English — written for this site
Lawrence Klein built large statistical models of whole economies, made up of hundreds of equations, which governments and businesses used to forecast growth and to test what a policy change would do before trying it. He also led Project LINK, which connected the models of many countries so that the effects of a shock could be traced across borders.
1981
- James TobinYale University
“for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices”
In plain English — written for this site
James Tobin studied how people choose a mix of assets to balance return against risk, and how financial markets carry the effects of monetary policy through to spending, jobs and prices. His “q” ratio — the market value of a firm compared with the cost of replacing its capital — explains when firms choose to invest.
1982
- George J. StiglerUniversity of Chicago
“for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation”
In plain English — written for this site
George Stigler studied how industries are structured and how markets work when information is costly to find. He is best known for the theory of regulatory capture: regulation is often shaped by, and serves, the very industry it is meant to control, rather than the public.
1983
- Gerard DebreuUniversity of California
“for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic theory and for his rigorous reformulation of the theory of general equilibrium”
In plain English — written for this site
Gerard Debreu put general equilibrium theory on rigorous mathematical foundations. With Kenneth Arrow, he proved that, under clearly stated conditions, a set of prices exists at which every market in an economy clears at the same time. His short book Theory of Value set the standard of proof that economic theory has followed since.
1984
- Richard StoneUniversity of Cambridge
“for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis”
In plain English — written for this site
Richard Stone designed the system of national accounts — the double-entry framework that records what a country produces, earns and spends, and how those three totals must agree. It became the basis of the United Nations System of National Accounts, so every official GDP figure published today, India’s included, rests on his work.
1985
- Franco ModiglianiMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
“for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets”
In plain English — written for this site
Franco Modigliani showed that people save while they work and run those savings down in retirement — the “life-cycle” hypothesis — so a country’s saving rate depends on its age structure and growth rate. With Merton Miller he also showed that, under idealised conditions, a firm’s value does not depend on whether it is financed by debt or by shares; real-world departures from that result, such as taxes, explain what actually happens.
1986
- James M. Buchanan Jr.Center for Study of Public Choice
“for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making”
In plain English — written for this site
James Buchanan founded public choice theory, which applies the methods of economics to politics. Voters, politicians and officials are treated as people pursuing their own interests, not as selfless servants of the public good. He argued that better outcomes come from better rules — constitutions and fiscal rules that constrain what governments can do — rather than from hoping for better people in office.
1987
- Robert M. SolowMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
“for his contributions to the theory of economic growth”
In plain English — written for this site
Robert Solow showed that, in the long run, rising living standards cannot come from simply piling up more machines, because each extra machine adds less than the last. Sustained growth in output per worker has to come from technological progress. When he measured the sources of American growth, most of it could not be explained by more capital or more labour; that unexplained part is still called the “Solow residual”.
1988
- Maurice AllaisÉcole Nationale Supérieur des Mines de Paris
“for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources”
In plain English — written for this site
Maurice Allais, a French engineer turned economist, worked out the conditions under which markets use resources efficiently, and applied them to the pricing of public enterprises such as utilities. He is also known for the Allais paradox, which showed that people’s choices when facing risk regularly break the rules of the standard theory of rational choice.
1989
- Trygve HaavelmoUniversity of Oslo
“for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures”
In plain English — written for this site
Trygve Haavelmo set econometrics on the foundations of probability theory: economic data should be treated as the outcome of a random process, which is what makes statistical testing legitimate. He also showed that because prices and quantities are determined together by supply and demand, simply relating one to the other with standard statistical methods gives misleading answers — the problem of “simultaneous equations”.
1990s10 prizes, 17 laureates
1990
- Harry M. MarkowitzCity University of New York
- Merton H. MillerUniversity of Chicago
- William F. SharpeStanford University
“for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics”
In plain English — written for this site
Three founders of financial economics. Harry Markowitz showed how holding a varied mix of assets — diversification — reduces risk for the same expected return. William Sharpe built on that to show that an asset’s expected return depends on how much it moves with the market as a whole, a measure called “beta”. Merton Miller, with Franco Modigliani, showed how a firm’s choice between borrowing and issuing shares affects its value.
1991
- Ronald H. CoaseUniversity of Chicago
“for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy”
In plain English — written for this site
Ronald Coase asked why firms exist at all if markets are efficient. His answer was transaction costs: finding partners, negotiating and enforcing contracts all cost something, and sometimes it is cheaper to organise activity inside a firm. He also showed that if property rights are clear and bargaining is cheap, people can settle problems like pollution between themselves — which means that, in the real world where bargaining is costly, the law and institutions matter a great deal.
1992
- Gary BeckerUniversity of Chicago
“for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour”
In plain English — written for this site
Gary Becker applied the economic way of thinking to parts of life that had been left to sociology and other disciplines: discrimination, crime, marriage and family, and education. His treatment of schooling and training as an investment that pays off over a working life, called human capital, is now central to how governments think about education.
1993
- Robert W. FogelUniversity of Chicago
- Douglass C. NorthWashington University
“for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change”
In plain English — written for this site
Robert Fogel and Douglass North brought economic theory and statistics to the study of history. Fogel estimated that railways added far less to American growth than had been assumed, by asking what the economy would have looked like without them. North argued that institutions — formal laws as well as informal norms — are what determine whether economies prosper or stagnate over the long run.
1994
- John C. HarsanyiUniversity of California
- John F. Nash Jr.Princeton University
- Reinhard SeltenRheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität
“for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games”
In plain English — written for this site
The first prize for game theory — the study of decisions in which each person’s best choice depends on what others choose. John Nash defined the equilibrium named after him: a situation where no one can do better by changing their own choice alone. Reinhard Selten refined it to rule out threats that would never actually be carried out. John Harsanyi extended it to situations where people do not know everything about each other.
1995
- Robert E. Lucas Jr.University of Chicago
“for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy”
In plain English — written for this site
Robert Lucas introduced rational expectations into macroeconomics: people use all the information they have, including what they know about government policy, when forming expectations about the future. One consequence, the “Lucas critique”, is that relationships estimated from past data can break down when policy changes, because people change their behaviour in response.
1996
- James A. MirrleesUniversity of Cambridge
- William VickreyColumbia University
“for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information”
In plain English — written for this site
James Mirrlees and William Vickrey studied how to design incentives when one side knows more than the other. Mirrlees worked out how progressive an income tax should be when the government can see people’s earnings but not their underlying ability. Vickrey showed that in a sealed-bid auction where the winner pays the second-highest bid, everyone’s best strategy is to bid what the item is truly worth to them. Vickrey died three days after the prize was announced.
1997
- Robert C. MertonHarvard University
- Myron ScholesLong Term Capital Management
“for a new method to determine the value of derivatives”
In plain English — written for this site
Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, building on work with Fischer Black, found a way to calculate the value of an option — a contract giving the right to buy or sell something later at a fixed price. Their formula made it possible to price and manage risk with derivatives, and helped financial markets in them grow rapidly. Black had died in 1995, and the prize is not awarded after death.
1998
- Amartya SenTrinity College
“for his contributions to welfare economics”
In plain English — written for this site
Amartya Sen brought ethics back into economics. He showed that famines, including the Bengal famine of 1943, can happen without any overall fall in food supply, when particular groups lose the means to obtain food. He argued that well-being should be judged by what people are actually able to do and to be — their “capabilities” — rather than by income alone, an idea behind the United Nations’ Human Development Index. He is the first Indian-born economics laureate.
1999
- Robert MundellColumbia University
“for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas”
In plain English — written for this site
Robert Mundell showed that a country cannot have a fixed exchange rate, free movement of capital and an independent monetary policy all at once; under a fixed rate, it is fiscal policy that works. He also asked when it makes sense for several regions or countries to share one currency — the theory of “optimum currency areas”, which laid the intellectual groundwork for the euro.
2000s10 prizes, 20 laureates
2000
- James J. HeckmanUniversity of Chicago
- Daniel L. McFaddenUniversity of California
James J. Heckman: “for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples”
Daniel L. McFadden: “for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice”
In plain English — written for this site
James Heckman and Daniel McFadden developed methods for analysing data about individuals and households. Heckman tackled selection bias: wages are only observed for people who have chosen to work, so a simple average gives a misleading picture unless that choice is accounted for. McFadden built models of choices between a fixed set of options — whether to drive, take the bus or the train — which are now used to plan transport, energy and housing policy.
2001
- George A. AkerlofUniversity of California
- A. Michael SpenceStanford University
- Joseph E. StiglitzColumbia University
“for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information”
In plain English — written for this site
George Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz showed how markets go wrong when one side knows more than the other. Akerlof’s “market for lemons” explains how buyers who cannot tell good used cars from bad drive good cars out of the market. Spence showed how the better-informed side can send a costly signal, such as an educational degree. Stiglitz showed how the less-informed side, such as an insurer or a bank, can design choices that sort people by their hidden characteristics.
2002
- Daniel KahnemanPrinceton University
- Vernon L. SmithGeorge Mason University
Daniel Kahneman: “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”
Vernon L. Smith: “for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms”
In plain English — written for this site
Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, showed with Amos Tversky that people rely on mental shortcuts that produce predictable errors, and that they feel a loss more strongly than a gain of the same size; Tversky had died in 1996. Vernon Smith established laboratory experiments as a way of testing economic theory, showing in controlled trading sessions how different market rules shape the prices and quantities that emerge.
2003
- Robert F. Engle IIINew York University
- Clive W.J. GrangerUniversity of California
Robert F. Engle III: “for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH)”
Clive W.J. Granger: “for methods of analyzing economic time series with common trends (cointegration)”
In plain English — written for this site
Two methods for analysing data that move over time. Robert Engle developed a way to model volatility that changes over time — calm periods followed by turbulent ones — which is now standard in measuring financial risk. Clive Granger showed how to analyse series that drift without settling around an average, and introduced “cointegration”: two such series, like consumption and income, can still move together in the long run.
2004
- Finn E. KydlandCarnegie Mellon University; University of California
- Edward C. PrescottArizona State University; Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
“for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles”
In plain English — written for this site
Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott showed that a government free to change its mind later has an incentive to break its promises — for example, to allow more inflation than it pledged — so people do not believe it. This “time consistency” problem is a central argument for fixed rules and independent central banks. They also argued that business cycles can be driven by real shocks such as changes in technology, using methods now standard in macroeconomics.
2005
- Robert J. AumannUniversity of Jerusalem, Center for RationalityHebrew
- Thomas C. SchellingUniversity of Maryland, Department of Economics and School of Public Policy
“for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”
In plain English — written for this site
Robert Aumann and Thomas Schelling used game theory to understand conflict and cooperation. Schelling showed how commitments, credible threats and shared expectations shape bargaining, from nuclear deterrence to everyday negotiation. Aumann showed that people who deal with each other repeatedly can sustain cooperation even when each acts in their own interest, because the future gives them a reason to keep faith today.
2006
- Edmund S. PhelpsColumbia University
“for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy”
In plain English — written for this site
Edmund Phelps showed that the trade-off between inflation and unemployment holds only in the short run: once people come to expect higher inflation, unemployment returns to its underlying level, and only inflation stays higher. He also studied how much a society should save to give the highest sustainable consumption across generations.
2007
- Leonid HurwiczUniversity of Minnesota
- Eric S. MaskinInstitute for Advanced Study
- Roger B. MyersonUniversity of Chicago
“for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory”
In plain English — written for this site
Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson founded mechanism design, sometimes described as game theory in reverse. Instead of predicting what people will do under given rules, it starts from the outcome you want and asks how to design the rules — of an auction, a vote or a regulation — so that people acting in their own interest, and holding private information, produce it. Hurwicz, at 90, was then the oldest laureate.
2008
- Paul KrugmanPrinceton University
“for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity”
In plain English — written for this site
Paul Krugman explained why so much trade happens between similar countries in similar goods — cars traded for cars — through economies of scale and consumers’ taste for variety. He also explained why economic activity concentrates in a few places: firms gather where markets are large, and markets grow where firms gather. This became known as the “new economic geography”.
2009
- Elinor OstromIndiana University; Arizona State University
- Oliver E. WilliamsonUniversity of California
Elinor Ostrom: “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”
Oliver E. Williamson: “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm”
In plain English — written for this site
Two answers to the question of who should govern economic activity. Elinor Ostrom showed that shared resources such as forests, fisheries and irrigation systems can be managed well by the communities that use them, without either privatisation or state control, and identified the rules that make this work. Oliver Williamson explained when activities are better organised inside a firm than through contracts in the market. Ostrom was the first woman to receive the prize.
2010s10 prizes, 20 laureates
2010
- Peter A. DiamondMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Dale T. MortensenNorthwestern University; Aarhus University
- Christopher A. PissaridesLondon School of Economics and Political Science
“for their analysis of markets with search frictions”
In plain English — written for this site
Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides studied markets where buyers and sellers take time and effort to find each other — “search frictions”. Their model of the labour market explains why unemployment and job vacancies exist side by side, and how policies such as unemployment benefits affect how long people stay unemployed.
2011
- Thomas J. SargentNew York University
- Christopher A. SimsPrinceton University
“for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy”
In plain English — written for this site
Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims developed ways to separate cause from effect in economy-wide data, where everything moves together. Sargent showed how to account for people’s expectations about policy, including why ending a hyperinflation requires a believable change of regime. Sims developed vector autoregressions, a method that traces how an economy responds over time to an unexpected shock, such as a surprise change in interest rates.
2012
- Alvin E. RothHarvard University; Harvard Business School
- Lloyd S. ShapleyUniversity of California
“for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design”
In plain English — written for this site
Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth worked on markets where prices cannot do the matching — assigning doctors to hospitals, students to schools, or kidney donors to patients. Shapley, with David Gale, designed a procedure that produces stable matches, where no two parties would both rather be with each other. Roth put it into practice, redesigning the American medical residency match, school choice in New York and Boston, and kidney exchange programmes.
2013
- Eugene F. FamaUniversity of Chicago
- Lars Peter HansenUniversity of Chicago
- Robert J. ShillerYale University
“for their empirical analysis of asset prices”
In plain English — written for this site
A prize that held an apparent contradiction. Eugene Fama showed that share prices are very hard to predict over days and weeks, because markets absorb new information quickly. Robert Shiller showed that over several years they are more predictable, and swing more than their underlying value justifies. Lars Peter Hansen developed a statistical method for testing theories of asset prices like these.
2014
- Jean TiroleToulouse School of Economics (TSE)
“for his analysis of market power and regulation”
In plain English — written for this site
Jean Tirole studied how to regulate industries dominated by a few powerful firms, such as telecommunications, railways, banking and digital platforms. His central message is that simple rules applied to all industries work poorly, and that regulation should be designed for the conditions of each industry and for what the regulator can and cannot observe.
2015
- Angus DeatonPrinceton University
“for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare”
In plain English — written for this site
Angus Deaton studied consumption — what households buy, and how it changes with income and prices — using detailed household surveys. His work shaped how poverty is measured in developing countries, including in India, and how well-being can be tracked through what people actually consume rather than through national averages.
2016
- Oliver HartHarvard University
- Bengt HolmströmMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
“for their contributions to contract theory”
In plain English — written for this site
Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström built contract theory. Holmström showed how to design pay when effort cannot be observed directly, by linking reward to every available signal of performance, not just the final result. Hart studied contracts that cannot foresee every situation, and showed that who holds ownership and decision rights then matters a great deal — with applications to whether public services, such as prisons, should be privatised.
2017
- Richard H. ThalerUniversity of Chicago
“for his contributions to behavioural economics”
In plain English — written for this site
Richard Thaler built behavioural economics into the mainstream. He showed that people lack self-control, care about fairness, and treat money differently depending on which mental “account” it sits in. His work on “nudges” — changing the default choice, for example by enrolling workers in a pension plan automatically while letting them opt out — has been adopted by governments around the world.
2018
- William D. NordhausYale University
- Paul M. RomerNYU Stern School of Business
William D. Nordhaus: “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis”
Paul M. Romer: “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis”
In plain English — written for this site
William Nordhaus built the first models linking the economy and the climate, which estimate the damage from carbon emissions and underpin the case for a carbon tax. Paul Romer explained long-run growth through ideas: because an idea can be used by everyone at once, investment in research drives growth, but markets left alone will produce too little of it.
2019
- Abhijit BanerjeeMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Esther DufloMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Michael KremerHarvard University
“for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”
In plain English — written for this site
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer changed how anti-poverty policy is tested. They broke large questions into small, precise ones — does providing textbooks improve learning? does remedial teaching? — and answered them with randomised controlled trials, comparing groups chosen by lottery. Much of the work was done in India. Duflo was the second woman and the youngest person to receive the prize.
2020s7 prizes, 17 laureates
2020
- Paul R. MilgromStanford University
- Robert B. WilsonStanford University
“for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats”
In plain English — written for this site
Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson developed auction theory, including how bidders behave when an item’s value is uncertain and the same for everyone, and why the winner often turns out to have overpaid — the “winner’s curse”. They then invented new auction formats for selling many related items at once, first used to sell radio frequencies in the United States in 1994 and since copied around the world, including for telecom spectrum.
2021
- David CardUniversity of California
- Joshua D. AngristMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Guido W. ImbensStanford University
David Card: “for his empirical contributions to labour economics”
Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens: “for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships”
In plain English — written for this site
David Card used “natural experiments” — real events that happen to affect some people and not others — to study labour markets. His study with Alan Krueger, who died in 2019, found that a minimum wage rise in New Jersey did not reduce employment compared with neighbouring Pennsylvania. Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens showed precisely what such experiments can and cannot tell us about cause and effect.
2022
- Ben BernankeThe Brookings Institution
- Douglas DiamondUniversity of Chicago
- Philip DybvigWashington University
“for research on banks and financial crises”
In plain English — written for this site
Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig explained why banks exist and why they are fragile. Diamond and Dybvig showed that banks turn short-term deposits into long-term loans, which makes them vulnerable to runs — and why deposit insurance prevents them. Bernanke showed that bank failures deepened the Great Depression by destroying lending relationships, and later, as chair of the Federal Reserve, led the response to the 2008 crisis.
2023
- Claudia GoldinHarvard University
“for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”
In plain English — written for this site
Claudia Goldin traced two centuries of women’s work in the United States. She showed that women’s participation in paid work fell with industrialisation before rising again, and that today most of the gap in pay between men and women arises within the same occupation, and opens up after the birth of a first child. She was the first woman to receive the prize unshared.
2024
- Daron AcemogluMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Simon JohnsonMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- James A. RobinsonUniversity of Chicago
“for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”
In plain English — written for this site
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson studied why some countries are rich and others poor. They argued that the difference lies in institutions: inclusive ones that protect property and spread power encourage investment, while extractive ones that serve a narrow elite do not. Using the history of European colonisation, they showed how institutions set up centuries ago still shape prosperity today.
2025
- Joel MokyrNorthwestern University; Eitan Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University
- Philippe AghionCollège de France; INSEAD; London School of Economics and Political Science
- Peter HowittBrown University
Joel Mokyr: “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress”
Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt: “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction”
In plain English — written for this site
Three explanations of how economies grow without stopping. Joel Mokyr, an economic historian, showed that sustained growth since the Industrial Revolution required a steady flow of useful knowledge and a society open to change. Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt built a model of “creative destruction”, in which new technologies and firms continually replace old ones, explaining how competition and innovation drive growth.
2026
- Robert E. HallStanford University
- Michael WoodfordColumbia University
“for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation”
In plain English — written for this site
Robert Hall and Michael Woodford were honoured for grounding macroeconomic stabilisation — the use of monetary and fiscal policy to smooth booms and recessions — in models of how individual households and firms behave. Hall’s work includes how household spending responds to changes in income and how wages and employment move over the business cycle. Woodford built the framework that most central banks now use to think about inflation targeting, and showed the power of managing expectations through clear communication about future policy.