Timeline of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1969 to the Present

1968: A Central Bank's Anniversary Creates a Prize

Sveriges Riksbank, the Swedish central bank and the oldest still operating in the world, was founded in 1668. To mark its three-hundredth anniversary in 1968 it made a donation to the Nobel Foundation and established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The wording matters: this is not one of the five prizes created by Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, and the Nobel Foundation itself maintains the distinction. What the new prize did share was its institutional machinery. It is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the same body that selects the physics and chemistry laureates, under equivalent nomination and selection procedures, and it is presented at the same Stockholm ceremony each 10 December. The prize money comes from the Riksbank's annual contribution rather than from Nobel's original endowment.

1969–1979: Econometrics, Aggregates and an Odd Couple

The first prize, in 1969, went jointly to the Norwegian Ragnar Frisch and the Dutchman Jan Tinbergen for developing and applying dynamic models to the analysis of economic processes. Frisch had coined the term econometrics and helped found the Econometric Society; Tinbergen built the first national macroeconometric models. Paul Samuelson became the first American laureate in 1970, and Simon Kuznets followed in 1971 for his empirical work on economic growth, which grew out of building national income accounts. John Hicks and Kenneth Arrow shared the 1972 prize for general equilibrium and welfare theory, and Wassily Leontief took the 1973 prize for input-output analysis. The 1974 award to Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich Hayek paired two economists with almost opposite politics. Milton Friedman won in 1976 and Herbert Simon in 1978.

1980s–1990s: Institutions, Information and Game Theory

The 1990s in particular rewarded work that had been on the margins for decades. Ronald Coase took the 1991 prize for showing that transaction costs and the assignment of property rights determine how firms and markets are organised. Gary Becker followed in 1992 for extending microeconomic reasoning to areas such as education, crime and family decisions. Robert Fogel and Douglass North shared the 1993 prize for applying economic theory and quantitative methods to economic history. In 1994, John Nash, John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten were recognised for equilibrium analysis in non-cooperative game theory, decades after Nash's original papers. Robert Lucas won in 1995 for the rational expectations hypothesis. Amartya Sen took the 1998 prize for work on welfare economics, social choice and famine.

2000s: Asymmetric Information, Experiments and the Commons

The 2001 prize went to George Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz for the analysis of markets with asymmetric information — the framework behind adverse selection, signalling and screening. In 2002 the psychologist Daniel Kahneman and the experimental economist Vernon Smith shared the prize, formally marking the arrival of behavioural and experimental methods in the discipline. Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson were recognised in 2007 for mechanism design theory, and Paul Krugman in 2008 for work on trade patterns and economic geography. In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to receive the prize, sharing it with Oliver Williamson; her fieldwork showed that communities frequently govern shared resources successfully without either privatisation or state control.

2010s–2020s: The Empirical Turn

Recent decades have leaned strongly toward evidence. Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller shared the 2013 prize for empirical analysis of asset prices, despite reaching very different conclusions about market efficiency. Richard Thaler won in 2017 for contributions to behavioural economics. In 2019, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer were recognised for an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty; Duflo became the second woman to receive the award. Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson took the 2020 prize for auction theory and practical auction design. David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens shared 2021 for natural experiments and causal inference. Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig won in 2022 for research on banks and financial crises, and Claudia Goldin was the sole laureate in 2023 for advancing understanding of women's labour market outcomes.