Role of Govt, Poverty Research Tipped for Economics Nobel

AFP/APP

Stockholm: Closing the Nobel season, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday, with specialists in credit, the role of government, and wealth inequality seen as potential contenders.

The winner of the prestigious prize, which last year went to American economist Claudia Goldin, will be revealed at 11:45 am (0945 GMT).

Goldin was recognized “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes” and was one of the few women ever awarded the prize. Of the 93 laureates honoured since 1969, only three have been women — Goldin in 2023, her compatriot Elinor Ostrom in 2009, and French-American Esther Duflo in 2019.

“The general trend in society to attach greater importance to parity and diversity has broadened the research process,” Mikael Carlsson, professor of economics at Uppsala University in Sweden, told AFP.

“However, this is not the criterion taken into account when assessing whether a scientific contribution is worthy of a Nobel Prize,” he insisted.

Carlsson predicts that Japan’s Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and Britain’s John H. Moore may win for their work on how small shocks can affect economic cycles, or American Susan Athey for her work on market design.

Criteria for Nobel Winners

For Magnus Henrekson of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm, the most obvious place to start is by looking at the research interests of the committee deciding which candidates are worthy. Its chairman specializes in development economics, though Henrekson doubts the field will be honoured again so soon after last year’s prize.

“I don’t think it’s likely that the same field will win the prize two years in a row,” Henrekson said.

Frenchman Philippe Aghion, along with Americans George Loewenstein, Kenneth Rogoff, and Carmen Reinhart, are also mentioned as worthy contenders.

Another prominent name this year is Turkish-American Daron Acemoglu, a professor at MIT and author of best-sellers including Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Acemoglu may be paired with Russian-American Andrei Shleifer.

Predicting the winner is always tricky, but online statistics platform Statista suggests that, based on past recipients and current research trends, Acemoglu could be recognized for his “work on the long-run development of institutions which facilitate or hinder economic growth.”

Other potential candidates include macroeconomists such as Frenchman Olivier Blanchard and Americans Larry Summers and Gregory Mankiw.

Economists focused on wealth inequality, such as France’s Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, as well as French-American Emmanuel Saez, have also been mentioned in recent years.

Canadian-American Janet Currie, a specialist in anti-poverty policies, is a favorite for analytics group Clarivate, which tracks potential Nobel science laureates based on citations. The group also highlighted British-Indian Partha Dasgupta as a candidate for “integrating nature and its resources in the human economy.”

Paolo Mauro, a former member of the International Monetary Fund, was also suggested for “empirical studies of the effects of corruption on investment and economic growth.”

Nobel Economics Prize Background

The economics prize is the only Nobel not among the original five created in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will. It was established through a donation from the Swedish central bank in 1968, leading critics to refer to it as a “false Nobel.” However, like the other Nobel science prizes, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decides the winner using the same selection process.

The economics prize concludes this year’s Nobel season, which has already honoured achievements in artificial intelligence for the physics and chemistry prizes. The Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, committed to fighting nuclear weapons.

South Korea’s Han Kan won the literature prize — the only woman laureate this year — while the medicine prize recognized discoveries in gene regulation.

The Nobel Prizes, which include a diploma, a gold medal, and a one-million-dollar prize, will be awarded at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.