NBER Researchers Win Nobel Prize in Economics

NBER Research Associates Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics with Eugene Fama. Hansen is the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is a research associate in the NBER's Asset Pricing (AP) and Economic Fluctuations and Growth (EFG) programs. Shiller is the Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, a research associate in the NBER's AP, EFG, and Monetary Economics programs, and the co-director of the NBER's Behavioral Economics working group. Fama is the Robert McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The award citation prepared by the Prize Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences highlighted the researchers' work on "the empirical analysis of asset prices." The background material that describes the prize citation notes the critical role that asset prices play in influencing a wide range of economic behaviors, and then explains that "[a]lthough we do not yet fully understand how asset prices are determined, the research of the laureates has revealed a number of important empirical regularities that are helping us to arrive at better explanations."

Hansen and Shiller join a long list of current and past NBER affiliates who have received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which is often called the Nobel Prize in Economics. Past NBER-affiliated winners include: Alvin Roth, 2012; Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, 2011; Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen, 2010; Paul Krugman, 2008; Edward Prescott and Finn Kydland, 2004; Robert Engle, 2003; George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz, 2001; James Heckman and Daniel McFadden, 2000; Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, 1997; Robert Lucas, Jr., 1995; Gary Becker, 1992; the late Robert Fogel, 1993; George Stigler, 1982; Theodore Schultz, 1979; Milton Friedman, 1976; and Simon Kuznets, 1971.