Young Einsteins and Bohrs may have been inspired to be more creative and harder workers by the dream of winning a Nobel Prize. Since there was no political economy Nobel award before 1968, that could not have been an operative motive for my generation of economists.

In conjunction with its tercentenary celebrations in 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (the central bank of Sweden) instituted a new award, "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" on the basis of an economic commitment by the bank in perpetuity. The award is given by...

From one point of view my studying economics was the result of accidental blind chance. Prior to graduating from high school I was born again at 8:00 a.m., January 2, 1932, when I first walked into the University of Chicago lecture hall. That day's lecture was on Malthus's theory that human...

I am an early riser, and I had finished my breakfast, brushed my teeth, and was on the way out the door of my Fairfax townhouse, when the telephone call from Stockholm came at 6:32 a.m. on 16 October 1986. My schedule called for a half-day's work at George Mason University before driving down...