Every year on December 10, the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony is held in Stockholm. As the last Nobel Prize award to be announced, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics will be announced on October 9 this year. The statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that no one may publicly or privately disclose any information about the nomination for 50 years. This restriction applies not only to nominees and nominators, but also to inquiries and opinions related to the award. But every year, discussions and predictions about the popular candidates remain enthusiastic.
In 2022, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, University of Chicago professor Douglas W. Diamond, and Washington University in St. Louis professor Philip H. Dybvig won the award for their research on the banking industry and financial crisis.
Li Rengui, a researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and deputy director of the editorial department of Economic Trends, told China Business News that as an icing on the cake, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics must be an economist who has been recognized by the mainstream economics community and has received honors close to the Nobel Prize level.
Li Rengui added that the "Citation Laureates" selected annually by the Clarivate Analytics website have important reference value. According to statistics from this website, since the establishment of the Citation Laureate Award in 2002, 71 outstanding award-winning scientists and economists have also won the Nobel Prize.
How are the Nobel Prizes selected, and what are the new changes in the selection trend in recent years?
According to the Nobel Prize official website, the selection for the Economics Prize is rigorous and time-consuming. Every September, the Nobel Prize Committee in Economics sends confidential nomination forms to approximately 3,000 individuals around the world, including outstanding professors from top universities around the world, economics laureates, and academicians of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The completed form must be received by the Economics Award Committee before January 31 of the following year. No one may nominate themselves.
The Economic Prize Committee consists of five members elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, but for many years has included part-time members, who have the same voting rights as the committee members. After receiving the list of nominations, the committee screens the nominations and selects preliminary candidates. Since nominations are often repeated, the final number is usually 250-350 people.
From March to May, the Economics Prize Committee will send the preliminary list of candidates to specially designated experts, who will evaluate the candidates' work.
From June to August, the Economics Prize Committee will write a report and make recommendations to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The report will be signed by all members of the committee.
In September, the Economic Prize Committee submits a report to the academicians of the Academy of Sciences and makes recommendations on the final candidates. The Economics Department of the Academy of Sciences will discuss the report at two meetings.
In October, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selected the winner of the Economic Prize by majority vote. The decision is final and cannot be appealed.
Every year on December 10, the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony is held in Stockholm. Nobel laureates receive their Nobel Prizes at the ceremony, including their Nobel Prize medals and certificates, as well as documents confirming the amount of the prize.
Looking at the award list of economics prizes, in the past forty years, the Nobel Prizes in many years were awarded to fields with strong mathematical and theoretical aspects, including econometrics, mathematical proofs of supply and demand theory, and game theory.
However, the award-winning model has gradually changed, such as emphasizing its social attributes in the social science definition of economics. In 1998, Indian-American economist Amartya Sen won the award for his contributions to welfare economics. Some believed that this was a signal that the awards committee recognized that economics is closely related to moral and social philosophy.
In addition, the Nobel Prize also recognizes the rapidly developing field of behavioral economics. In 2022, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky won the first prize for behavioral economics for their work in the fields of cognitive biases, prospect theory, and loss aversion. Subsequently, Robert Shiller in 2013 and Richard Thaler in 2017 also won awards in this field.
As mentioned above, winners must have made significant contributions in their field. If influence is measured based on the number of academic citations, Harvard professor Andrei Schleifer and MIT professor Daren Acemoglu are likely to win the award for their research on the importance of institutions. Another Harvard professor, Marc Melitz, is an economist who is frequently cited in trade theory.
In addition, Harvard University professor Robert J. Barro has made outstanding contributions in the fields of macroeconomics, economic growth and monetary theory. He is also considered by the economics community to be one of the potential future Nobel Prize winners. Economists such as Emanuelle Saez, Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman are also likely to win awards for their research on income and inequality.