Two American economists, Robert Hall and Michael Woodford, have been named winners of the 2026 Nobel economics prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday. The academy honoured them for work on the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.
The award is the last of this year’s Nobel prizes and carries a sum of 12 million Swedish crowns, equal to $1.2 million. Its formal name is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It was first handed out in 1969 and is not one of the five original awards set out in the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, the industrialist and dynamite inventor. Sweden’s central bank established it.
New models aim to guide well-timed economic policy
According to the academy, the two laureates built new macroeconomic models that make effective stabilisation policy easier to carry out. Those models allow governments and central banks to time fiscal and monetary measures so that damaging swings in the economy become less severe.
John Hassler, chair of the prize committee, said in a statement that the laureates’ research gave a solid theoretical base for models now used by central banks and governments worldwide. He added that the work leaves policymakers better placed to handle shocks, including energy crises and abrupt shifts in household spending.
Past winners and the prize’s record on diversity
Most previous laureates have come from the United States. Only three women have ever won, the most recent being Claudia Goldin in 2023 for research into how gender has affected pay and employment in the United States over time.
Before the announcement, the Institute for Scientific Information, part of Clarivate, had listed monetary policy, the economics of information technology and evolutionary economic theory as possible research areas. Last year’s prize went to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for their work on creative destruction, and on how new technology and production methods can drive growth and living standards. The other Nobel prizes were announced last week.
