The Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Robert E. Hall
(Stanford University, California) and Michael Woodford (Columbia University, New York) “for the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation”. 

This year’s prize is dedicated to stabilisation: indeed – according to the committee that awards the prizes – the 2026 Nobel laureates have developed new macroeconomic models that have significantly improved our ability to implement effective stabilisation policies. Based on these models, timely fiscal and monetary policy measures can reduce economic peaks and troughs.

Robert E. Hall, born in 1943 in Palo Alto, California, obtained his PhD in 1967 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and is a professor at Stanford University. Michael Woodford, born in 1955 in Chicopee, Massachusetts, holds a PhD obtained in 1983 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and is a professor at Columbia University in New York.

The Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, in accordance with the same principles that have governed the awarding of the Nobel Prizes since 1901. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (the Swedish central bank) established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel. The prize is funded by a donation received by the Nobel Foundation in 1968 from Sveriges Riksbank to mark the bank’s 300th anniversary. The prize money (12 million Swedish kronor, to be divided equally amongst the laureates) is the same as that of the Nobel Prizes and is paid out by the Riksbank. The first prize in economic sciences was awarded to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969. Up to the 2025 award, there have been 99 laureates in economic sciences, including three women. The youngest laureate was 46 years old, and the oldest 90.