How are GDP and inflation affected by a temporary increase in the interest rate or a tax cut? What happens if a central bank makes a permanent change in its inflation target or a government modifies its objective for budgetary balance? This year’s Laureates in economic sciences, Thomas J....

One of the main tasks for macroeconomists is to explain how macroeconomic aggregates -such as GDP, investment, unemployment, and inflation- behave over time. How are these variables affected by economic policy and by changes in the economic environment? A primary aspect in this analysis is the...

Why are so many people unemployed at the same time that there are a large number of job openings? How can economic policy affect unemployment? This year’s Laureates have developed a theory which can be used to answer these questions. This theory is also applicable to markets other than the...

Scientific Background on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009 compiled by the Economic Sciences Prize Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 1998 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, to Professor Amartya Sen, Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K. (citizen of India) for his contributions to welfare economics.

Scientific Background, The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2008. Over the centuries, international trade and the location of economic activity have been at the forefront of economic thought. Even today, free trade, globalization, and urbanization remain as commonplace topics in the popular...

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, 1999 to Professor Robert A. Mundell, Columbia University, New York, USA for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his...

Information for the Public, The Prize in Economic Sciences 2006. Full employment, stable prices and rapid growth are central goals of economic policy. But policy always faces difficult goal conflicts. How should inflation and unemployment be balanced against each other? What tradeoff should be...

Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz's analyses form the core of modern information economics. Their work transformed the way economists think about the functioning of markets. The analytical methods they suggested have been applied to explain many social and economic institutions, especially different...

Advanced information on Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2006. The relationship between inflation and unemployment and the trade-off between the welfare of current and future generations are key issues in macroeconomic research. They have a strong influence...