To be considered for the Nobel Prize, a person must be nominated by a relative select group that includes past Nobel Prize winners, members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, members of the Nobel Prize committee of the Bank of Sweden, and a few other distinguished, notable people. Nominations are received by the selection committee in January. All nominations and deliberations are kept secret. The Prize is then announced in October, with the official awards ceremony in December.
Awards are generally made to scholars based either on a lifetime of significant contributions in several areas or the strength of a single monumental contribution. Milton Friedman, for example, was cited for his work in monetary history, monetary theory, consumption analysis, and stabilization policy. John Nash, in contrast, was cited for his development of game theory analysis.
| Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences |
| Year | Recipient(s) | Contribution |
| 2003 | ROBERT F. ENGLE | for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility |
| CLIVE W. J. GRANGER | for methods of analyzing economic time series with common trends (cointegration) |
| 2002 | DANIEL KAHNEMAN | for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty |
| VERNON L. SMITH | for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms |
| 2001 | GEORGE A. ACKERLOF, A. MICHAEL SPENCE, and JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ | for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information |
| 2000 | JAMES J. HECKMAN | for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples |
| DANIEL L. MCFADDEN | for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice |
| 1999 | ROBERT A. MUNDELL | for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas |
| 1998 | AMARTYA SEN | for his contributions to welfare economics |
| 1997 | ROBERT C. MERTON and MYRON S. SCHOLES | for a new method to determine the value of derivatives |
| 1996 | JAMES A. MIRRLEES and WILLIAM VICKREY | for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information |
| 1995 | ROBERT LUCAS | for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy |
| 1994 | JOHN C. HARSANYI , JOHN F. NASH and REINHARD SELTEN | for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games |
| 1993 | ROBERT W. FOGEL and DOUGLASS C. NORTH | for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change |
| 1992 | GARY S. BECKER | for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including nonmarket behavior |
| 1991 | RONALD H. COASE | for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy |
| 1990 | HARRY M. MARKOWITZ , MERTON M. MILLER and WILLIAM F. SHARPE | for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics |
| 1989 | TRYGVE HAAVELMO | for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures |
| 1988 | MAURICE ALLAIS | for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources |
| 1987 | ROBERT M. SOLOW | for his contributions to the theory of economic growth |
| 1986 | JAMES M. BUCHANAN, JR. | for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making |
| 1985 | FRANCO MODIGLIANI | for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets |
| 1984 | SIR RICHARD STONE | for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis |
| 1983 | GERARD DEBREU | for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic theory and for his rigorous reformulation of the theory of general equilibrium |
| 1982 | GEORGE J. STIGLER | for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation |
| 1981 | JAMES TOBIN | for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices |
| 1980 | LAWRENCE R. KLEIN | for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies |
| 1979 | THEODORE W. SCHULTZ and SIR ARTHUR LEWIS | for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries |
| 1978 | HERBERT A. SIMON | for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations |
| 1977 | BERTIL OHLIN and JAMES E MEADE | for their pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements |
| 1976 | MILTON FRIEDMAN | for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy |
| 1975 | LEONID VITALIYEVICH KANTOROVICH and TJALLING C. KOOPMANS | for their contributions to the theory of optimum allocation of resources |
| 1974 | GUNNAR MYRDAL and FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK | for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena |
| 1973 | WASSILY LEONTIEF | for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems |
| 1972 | SIR JOHN R. HICKS and KENNETH J. ARROW | for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory |
| 1971 | SIMON KUZNETS | for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development |
| 1970 | PAUL A SAMUELSON | for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science |
| 1969 | RAGNAR FRISCH and JAN TINBERGEN | for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes |
