Nobel Prize in Economics

The prize is formally a memorial award in economic sciences rather than one of Alfred Nobel’s five original prizes. The Sveriges Riksbank created it in connection with its tercentenary and made a donation to the Nobel Foundation to finance the award; Sweden’s Parliament approved the arrangement in 1968.¹ The first laureates, Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch, were recognized for developing and applying dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes.²

The Nobel Foundation administers the award within the broader Nobel system, while the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for selecting the laureates. The official name preserves the phrase “in Memory of Alfred Nobel,” distinguishing the award’s legal origin from the original endowment.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selects the laureates through a process involving nominations, expert assessment, and deliberation by its Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.³ Nominations are invited from qualified scholars and institutions rather than submitted directly by members of the public; nominees cannot nominate themselves. The committee evaluates work across economics and closely related fields, including contributions that use mathematics, statistics, experiments, historical evidence, or institutional analysis.

The award is normally announced in October and presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. A prize may be divided among no more than three people, and the monetary amount can change because it is determined by the Nobel Foundation’s prize regulations and available funds.⁴

The prize has recognized research in a wide range of areas, including macroeconomics, monetary theory, development economics, econometrics, labor markets, finance, public economics, economic history, game theory, and the study of institutions. Some laureates have worked across disciplinary boundaries: research honored by the prize has drawn on psychology, political science, sociology, statistics, and computer science as well as conventional economic theory.

Its influence extends beyond academic economics because laureated work often supplies concepts or methods used by central banks, governments, international organizations, and businesses. Recognition does not mean that every policy implication of a laureate’s work is universally accepted; economic evidence can be contested, and the prize honors a contribution rather than certifying a single political program. The award’s official archive records the motivations and biographies of each laureate.⁵

The award’s institutional status is one of its most distinctive features: it is administered alongside the Nobel Prizes but was created decades later by an external donor institution. This distinction has prompted recurring debate about whether it should be called a “Nobel Prize,” even though the Nobel Foundation and Nobel Prize organizations officially include it in the annual Nobel program.¹

The field represented by the prize has also changed noticeably over time. Laureates have included scholars whose central contributions concern bounded rationality, behavioral economics, climate change, poverty, causal inference, auctions, banking, and the measurement of well-being. The prize has sometimes been shared by theorists and empirical researchers whose methods differ sharply, reflecting the breadth of modern economic sciences. Women remain a minority among laureates, with Elinor Ostrom becoming the first woman to receive the award in 2009.⁶

Laureate

A person who receives the prize; an award may recognize one, two, or three laureates.

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The Swedish institution that selects recipients of the prize in economic sciences.

Sveriges Riksbank

Sweden’s central bank, which established and funds the memorial award.

Prize motivation

The official statement explaining the contribution for which a laureate or laureates were recognized.