Nobel economics prize set to be announced on Monday

The final Nobel prize of this year’s season is being announced on Monday morning when organisers reveal the winner or winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.

Last year’s award went to three economists — Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson — who studied why some countries are rich and others poor and have documented that freer, open society are more likely to prosper.

The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19^th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.

Since then, it has been awarded 56 times to a total of 96 laureates. Only three of the winners before Monday’s announcement were women.

Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, but it is always presented together with the others on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

Nobel honours were announced last week in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.