Nobel Prize in economics 2026: Robert E. Hall, Michael Woodford win the award

The Economics Nobel is being awarded to Robert E. Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University for “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday (October 12, 2026).

“This year’s laureates in economic sciences, Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford, have developed new macroeconomic models that have significantly improved our ability to implement effective stabilisation policy. On the basis of these models, well-timed fiscal and monetary policy measures can reduce the economy’s peaks and troughs,” the Academy said.

Nobel prize 2026: An interactive guide

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

The economics prize, first awarded ⁠in 1969, is not one of the original five awards created in the 1895 will of industrialist ​and dynamite inventor ‌Alfred Nobel, but was established by Sweden’s central bank.

The Economics Nobel was announced three days after South African jurist Navaneetham ‘Navi’ Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The 2026 Nobel season comes to a close with the announcement of Economics Nobel.

In 2025, the economics award went to American-Israeli Joel Mokyr, France’s Philippe Aghion and Canada’s Peter Howitt for research into how technology drives and affects growth.

The economics prize is the only Nobel not among the original five established in the will of Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

Officially called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, it was created through a donation from Sweden’s central bank in 1968, leading detractors to dub it “a false Nobel”.

So far, two women have been honoured during this year’s Nobel season: Navi Pillay, who won the peace prize on Friday (October 9, 2026), and Canadian-Icelandic writer Anne Carson, the literature laureate.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Frenchman Henri Kagan and Japan’s Kenso Soai, and the Physics Prize to Belgian Francis Halzen.

And the first prize to be announced, in medicine, went to American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel.

The winners will get a cash award of 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million). The award will be presented on December 10, the Nobel Prize day, also the death anniversary of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who in his will dictated that his estate should be used to fund “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”.