Robert Hall and Michael Woodford win 2026 Nobel economics prize

Americans Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 Nobel economics prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday, 12 October. The academy said the award was "for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation." The winners were announced at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

The award is formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, according to The Japan Times. It is worth 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million) and is the final prize to be given out this year.

John Hassler, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement that "the laureates' work has provided us with a stable theoretical foundation for the models that are now used by central banks and governments around the world." Hassler also said: "With them, we are better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households consume."

The Japan Times reported that the two laureates developed new macroeconomic models that improved the ability to implement effective stabilization policy. It said these enable well-timed fiscal and monetary policy measures that can reduce the intensity of damaging swings in the economy. Le Monde described the award as going to two economists who "rebuilt the macroeconomic analytical framework." It reported that, by studying how consumption decisions are made and how prices are set in concrete terms, the two refined the understanding of the economy and provided public policymakers with new tools.

The economics prize was first awarded in 1969, according to The Japan Times. It is not one of the original five awards created in the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel; it was established by Sweden's central bank. The majority of previous laureates have been from the United States, and only three women have ever won, most recently Claudia Goldin in 2023 for work on how gender has affected pay and employment over time in the United States.

Last year's winners were Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, for work on "creative destruction" and how new technology and production methods can boost growth and living standards. The Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were announced the previous week. An analysis by the Institute for Scientific Information, part of Clarivate, had picked researchers working on monetary policy, the economics of information technology and evolutionary economic theory as possible recipients.