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Winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Announced
It is emphasized that the winners have shown that one explanation for differences in national well-being is the social institutions introduced during the colonial period. "Inclusive institutions were often introduced in poor countries during colonial times, which led to shared prosperity over time. This is an important reason why once-rich colonies now become poor, and vice versa," the document says. According to Jakob Svensson, chairman of the Prize Committee for Economic Sciences, the winners have demonstrated the importance of public institutions in reducing the huge income gaps between countries.
Last year, the prize for economics was awarded to American professor Claudia Goldin. The award was presented with the words: “To deepen understanding of the role of women in the labour market.” Goldin published the first comprehensive report on women’s earnings and participation in the labour market over a period of more than 200 years, which, according to the Commission, will help to understand what barriers need to be overcome in this area in the future.
Officially, the economics prize is not considered a "Nobel Prize" (Alfred Nobel himself did not mention economics in his will, and his letters make it clear that he did not like economists). Each year is considered a kind of "point" in the Nobel cycle. The Nobel Prize in Economics was established in 1968 by the Swedish National Bank, which donates funds to the Nobel Foundation. In 1975, the prize was awarded to the Soviet mathematician and economist Leonid Kantorovich (jointly with the American Tjalling Koopmans), one of the founders of linear programming, for his contribution to the theory of optimal resource allocation. The award was also received by Simon Kuznets and Wassily Leontief, two Russian-born scientists who immigrated to the United States in the 1970s.
The prize will be awarded to all winners on December 10 (the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death), and in 2024 it will be worth 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million).
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded on October 7 to Victor Ambros and Gary Ravkan of the United States for their work on the guidance role of microRNA. On October 8, the Nobel Prize in Physics was jointly awarded to John Hopfield of the United States and Geoffrey Hinton of the United Kingdom for their work on machine learning methods. On October 9, Americans David Baker and John Jumper and Britain's Demis Hassabis received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on protein structure. On October 10, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean writer Han Kang for "powerful poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life." On October 11, Nihon Hidanke (日本日堂施), a Japanese public organization advocating for global nuclear disarmament, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.