Winner of the Nobel memorial economics prize set to be announced in Sweden

Stockholm, October 9

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the final prize of this year’s Nobel’s season, is set to be announced in Stockholm on Monday.

The winner or winners unveiled by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences follow the awards in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace that were announced last week.

The economics award was created in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank and is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Last year’s winners were former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their research into bank failures that helped shape America’s aggressive response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

Only two of the 92 economics laureates honoured have been women.

A week ago, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine. The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz.

U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov won the chemistry prize on Wednesday. They were followed by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who was awarded the prize for literature. On Friday, jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi won the peace prize.

The prizes are handed out at awards ceremonies in December in Oslo and Stockholm. They carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish Krona (about USD 1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma.