The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (Swe. Sveriges Riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), often colloquially called The Nobel Prize in Economics or The Nobel Prize for Economics, is different from the rest of prizes awarded at the Nobel Prize ceremony in that it is not part of the Alfred Nobel bequest. It was instituted by the Bank of Sweden (Sveriges Riksbank) at its 300th anniversity in 1969.
Award process
The prize is, like the prizes in Chemistry and Physics, decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and is awarded alongside the other prizes in the sciences. Nominations of about one hundred living persons are made each year by qualifying nominators and are received by a five to eight member committee, which then submits a reward proposal to the Nobel Assembly, which then votes on the candidates (up to 3). The final award is made in Stockholm, and is accompanied by a prize (10 million Kroner, or roughly 1 million euros as of 2004).
Controversy
Members of the Nobel family contest the use of the term "Nobel Prize in Economics" in any context. Peter Nobel claims that the Bank of Sweden has "infringed on the trademarked name of Nobel. Two-thirds of the bank’s prizes in economics have gone to US economists of the Chicago School, who create mathematical models to speculate in stock markets and options - the very opposite of the purposes of Alfred Nobel, to improve the human condition.”
Controversy stems from a few areas:
- 1. Its affiliation with the Nobel name despite its not being a true Nobel Prize.
- 2. A perceived bias toward neoliberal economics.
- 3. That economics is a social science, making objective evaluation of candidates more difficult.
- 4. A perception that the most influential economists were awarded the prize in the 70's and early 80's, and that since then the available candidates in the field have been weaker and hence more controversial.
Winners
List of Prize Winners from 1969 to the present day.
1960s - 1970s - 1980s - 1990s - 2000s
1960s
1970s
Year |
Name |
Topics |
1970
|
Paul Samuelson
|
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 |
1971
|
Simon Kuznets
|
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 |
1972
|
John Hicks, Kenneth Arrow
|
for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory |
1973
|
Wassily Leontief
|
for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems. |
1974
|
Gunnar Myrdal, Friedrich 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 |
1975
|
Leonid Kantorovich, Tjalling Koopmans
|
for their contributions to the theory of optimum allocation of resources |
1976
|
Milton Friedman
|
for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy. |
1977
|
Bertil Ohlin, James Meade
|
for their pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements |
1978
|
Herbert Simon
|
for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations |
1979
|
Theodore Schultz, Arthur Lewis
|
for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries |
1980s
Year |
Name |
Topics |
1980
|
Lawrence Klein
|
for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies |
1981
|
James Tobin
|
for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices |
1982
|
George Stigler
|
for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation |
1983
|
Gerard Debreu
|
for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic theory and for his rigorous reformulation of the theory of general equilibrium |
1984
|
Richard Stone
|
for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis |
1985
|
Franco Modigliani
|
for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets |
1986
|
James Buchanan Jr
|
for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making |
1987
|
Robert Solow
|
for his contributions to the theory of economic growth |
1988
|
Maurice Allais
|
for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources |
1989
|
Trygve Haavelmo
|
for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures |
1990s
Year |
Name |
Topics |
1990
|
Harry Markowitz, Merton Miller, William Sharpe
|
for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics |
1991
|
Ronald Coase
|
for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy |
1992
|
Gary Becker
|
for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour |
1993
|
Robert Fogel, Douglass North
|
for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change |
1994
|
Reinhard Selten, John Forbes Nash, John Harsanyi
|
for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games |
1995
|
Robert Lucas Jr
|
for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy |
1996
|
James Mirrlees, William Vickrey
|
for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information |
1997
|
Robert Merton, Myron Scholes
|
for a new method to determine the value of derivatives |
1998
|
Amartya Sen
|
for his contributions to welfare economics |
1999
|
Robert Mundell
|
for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas |
2000s
External links
Last updated: 05-23-2005 10:05:37