Nobel Laureates

Research Associate Douglas W. Diamond, former Research Associate Ben S. Bernanke, and Philip Dybvig received the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their research on banks and financial crises. In announcing the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained that the laureates’ “analyses have been of great practical importance in regulating financial markets and dealing with financial crises." At the time of the award, Diamond was the...

NBER Research Associates Joshua D. Angrist, David Card, and Guido W. Imbens were awarded the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of their contributions to labor economics and the analysis of natural experiments.In announcing the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained that “Card’s studies of core questions for society, and Angrist and Imbens’ methodological contributions, have shown that natural experiments...

 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer were awarded the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for studies in development economics and global poverty that championed randomized controlled trials as a methodology for analyzing how a wide range of policy interventions — in health, education, credit markets, and local governance, among others — can contribute to poverty alleviation.The laureates' work "has considerably improved our ability...

 William D. Nordhaus and Paul N. Romer were awarded the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their contributions to the economic analysis of long-term growth, in particular, Nordhaus's work on the interaction between economic growth and global climate change and Romer's work on the way market forces affect the rate of innovation and technical change.The laureates "have designed methods for addressing some of our time's most basic and pressing...

 Richard H. Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work incorporating psychologically realistic assumptions of limited rationality, social preferences, and lack of self-control into analyses of economic decision-making, showing how these human traits systematically affect individual decisions and market outcomes.“Richard Thaler’s contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making,”...

 Oliver D. Hart and Bengt R. Holmström won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2016 for their contributions to analyzing incentives, institutions, and organizations in the field of contract theory."Contract theory provides us with a general means of understanding contract design. One of the theory's goals is to explain why contracts have various forms and designs. Another goal is to help us work out how to draw up better contracts, thereby shaping...

 Research Associate Angus Deaton was awarded the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare. "To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its announcement of the award. "More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and...

  Research Associates Lars P. Hansen and Robert J. Shiller shared the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Eugene F. Fama for work on empirical analysis of asset prices. In announcing the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that “[t]he Laureates have laid the foundation for the current understanding of asset prices. It relies in part on fluctuations in risk and risk attitudes, and in part on behavioral biases and market...

  Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2012 for what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described as their contributions to solving "a central economic problem: how to match different agents as well as possible. For example, students have to be matched with schools and donors of human organs with patients in need of a transplant. How can such matching be accomplished as efficiently as possible?” The committee...

 Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2011 for developing methods that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said could be used to identify causal relationships between policymakers and private sector decision-makers.“The expectations of the private sector regarding future economic activity and policy influence decisions about wages, saving and investments. Concurrently, economic-policy decisions are...

 NBER Research Associates Peter A. Diamond and Dale T. Mortensen shared the 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Christopher A. Pissarides. In making the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences highlighted the three researchers' analysis of markets with search frictions. Diamond analyzed the foundations of search markets; he, Mortensen, and Pissarides expanded the theory and applied it to the labor market. “The Laureates’ models help us...

  Paul Krugman was awarded the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his formulation of a new theory of trade that the prize committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said "deepen[s] our understanding of the determinants of trade and the location of economic activity…. He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography.”Krugman’s theory clarified why worldwide trade is dominated by...

 Research Associate Edward C. Prescott and Finn E. Kydland were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2004 for their contributions to the understanding of forces driving business cycle fluctuations and the design of economic policy— work described by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as “of great significance, not only for macroeconomic analysis, but also for the practice of monetary and fiscal policy in many countries.” Their work...

  Research Associate Robert F. Engle III and Clive W. J. Granger were awarded the 2003 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their development of statistical techniques used to measure investment risk and track economic trends. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Engle had created "methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility" that have “become essential tools of arbitrage pricing theory and practice,” and that...

 Research Associate Joseph E. Stiglitz, NBER Board Member George A. Akerlof, and A. Michael Spence won the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their pioneering work on the shortcomings and imperfections of market systems.Stiglitz’s research concentrated on what could be done by ill-informed individuals and operators to improve their positions in markets with asymmetric information. Akerlof concentrated on markets in which the sellers of a...

 Research Associates James J. Heckman and Daniel L. McFadden were awarded the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which cited Heckman’s development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples and McFadden’s development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice. Their scholarship “resolved fundamental problems that arise in the statistical analysis of microdata,” the Academy said. ...

 Research Associates Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for their development of a mathematical formula aimed at measuring the value of stock options and other financial commodities.Scholes and Fischer Black, a colleague who died prior to the award, developed the Black-Scholes option valuation formula, which made options trading more accessible by giving investors a benchmark for valuing them. Merton...

William Vickery, a member of the NBER Board of Directors, shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1996 with James A. Mirrlees for what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described as “their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information."Vickery specialized in auction theory and introduced the idea of using differential pricing to relieve traffic congestion at peak times and in high-traffic locations. He...

  Robert E. Lucas Jr., a research associate affiliated with the NBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations, won the 1995 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his development and application of the hypothesis of rational expectations, which holds that people make economic choices based on their previous experiences and future expectations and shows that activist government policy to stabilize the economy could have no effect, or could make matters worse.“Lucas...

 NBER Research Associate Robert W. Fogel and Douglass C. North, a former member of the NBER Board of Directors, won the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their research in economic history. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences credited them with having “renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.”Fogel, the inaugural director of the NBER's...

  Gary S. Becker, an NBER research associate from 1957 to 1979, won the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for applying the principle of rational, optimizing behavior to areas in which researchers formerly assumed that behavior was habitual and often irrational. The award cited his work on such concerns as investment in human capital, marriage and childbearing, crime, and discrimination. “Gary Becker applied economic theories and approaches to...

Robert M. Solow, a member of the NBER Board of Directors, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1987 for creating what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described as “a theoretical framework which can be used in discussing the factors which lie behind economic growth in both quantitative and theoretical terms … [and] to measure empirically the contributions made by various production factors in economic growth.”Solow quantified the key role of...

George J. Stigler, a member of the NBER Board of Directors and former research associate, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1982 “for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation.”Stigler “has made fundamental contributions to the study of market processes and the analysis of the structure of industries,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the prize. “His studies of the...

James Tobin, a member of the NBER Board of Directors, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1981 "for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production, and prices."The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences found that Tobin had “made substantial contributions in such widely differing areas as econometric methods and strictly formalized game theory, the theory of household and firm behavior, general macro theory...

Theodore W. Schultz and Arthur Lewis were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1979 for studies of problems and issues in agriculture in the United States and developing countries.The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences wrote that “the main characteristic of Schultz’s studies in agricultural economics is that he does not treat agricultural economy in isolation, but as an integral part of the entire economy.” His analyses of productivity in agriculture...

Milton Friedman, a member of the NBER research staff, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1976 “for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.”Friedman’s best-known contributions were in the realm of monetary economics. His monumental work with NBER Research Associate Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, provided...

 Simon Kuznets, a former NBER research associate, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1971 "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."Kuznets pioneered methods for measuring the economic growth of nations and calculating the size of changes in national income. At the time of the award, Kuznets was the George F....

Paul A. Samuelson, a member of the NBER Board of Directors, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1970 for clarifying the language of economics by applying mathematics to questions of static and dynamic equilibrium, developing economic theory, and raising the level of economic analysis.In the prize citation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that “more than any other contemporary economist, he has contributed to raising the general analytical and...