The 2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to US academics Robert Hall and Michael Woodford for their work on how monetary and fiscal policy can help stabilise fluctuations in the economy, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The winners of the prestigious award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel and the final prize to be given out this year, were announced on Monday. The two laureates developed new macroeconomic models that improve people’s ability to implement effective stabilisation policies, enabling fiscal and monetary policy measures that can reduce damaging swings in the economy.
Hall and Woodford then developed new tools to understand what policy responses could be the most effective. The majority of previous laureates have been from the United States. Only three women have ever won, most recently Claudia Goldin in 2023 for her work on how gender has affected pay and employment over time in the US.
Last year’s winners – Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt – won for their work on “creative destruction” and how new technology and production methods can boost growth and living standards. Like the other Nobel awards, the economics prize consists of a diploma, a gold medal, and a $1.2m cheque. The Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were announced last week, with South African jurist Navi Pillay and Canadian writer Anne Carson among the winners.
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