Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics

At the press conference held at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics were announced.

According to the statement made by the academy, Americans Hall and Woodford were deemed worthy of this award for their work in the field of "microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stability".

With their work, Hall and Woodford revealed how economic models could be restructured in order to revitalize stabilization policies.

This approach of Hall and Woodford, who prefer to build their models on microeconomic foundations rather than relying on statistical connections between macroeconomic variables such as inflation, production and consumption, involves understanding how the aggregate of individual households and businesses affect the economy through their actions.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Joel Mokyr "for having identified the preconditions for sustainable growth through technological developments", as well as Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for their work on the "theory of sustainable growth through creative destruction".

Who are Hall and Woodford?

Born in 1943 in California, USA, Robert E. Hall continues his work as an economics professor at Stanford University.

Michael Woodford, born in 1955 in Massachusetts, USA, is a professor of economics at Columbia University.

About the Nobel Prizes

The awards given by the Nobel Foundation, which was established on June 29, 1900, after the death of the Swedish Alfred Nobel, to those who served humanity, are considered the most prestigious awards in the world.

Nobel Prizes are given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to the individuals or organizations deemed most successful in 5 branches: physics, chemistry, literature, peace and medicine.

In addition, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded for the first time in 1969, when the Swedish Central Bank decided in 1968 to award an award in economics in memory of Alfred Nobel.

Nobel Prizes are delivered to their owners at a ceremony held every year on December 10, the day Alfred Nobel died.

On the other hand, there have been several years when the prizes were not awarded since their inception in 1901. Most of the cases where awards were not made occurred during the First and Second World Wars. The award ceremonies could not be held in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 epidemic.