The Nobel Memorial Prize in economics will be announced on Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, concluding a week of awards announcements. Officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, this prestigious award was established by the central bank of Sweden to honor Alfred Nobel, the Swedish entrepreneur and chemist who created the original five Nobel Prizes and invented dynamite. The first winners of this award were Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969.
Last year, Harvard University Professor Claudia Goldin received the accolade for her influential research on the factors contributing to the discrepancy in women’s workforce participation and the wage gap between men and women. She became the third woman in the history of the award to be honored among the 93 laureates in economics.
While some purists argue that the economics prize doesn’t fit within the traditional Nobel categories, it has been customarily awarded alongside the other prizes on December 10, commemorating the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. The announcements for the Nobel prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, and peace were made in the previous week.
