Nobel economics prize awarded to Richard Thaler
The Latest on the Nobel Economic Prize (all times local):
2:25 p.m.
For the second consecutive year, there were no women among the 2017 Nobel prize laureates.
The head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says the committees that choose Nobel Prize winners will meet this winter to discuss gender and ethnic diversity issues in the prestigious awards.
Goran Hannsson said after the announcement of the economics prize on Monday that "I hope in five years, 10 years, we'll see a very different distribution."
Each of the six prizes is chosen by a different committee, three of which are currently headed by women. Three of the prize committees are within the sciences academy. Hansson said he did not believe there was systemic gender discrimination, but "we are concerned; we are taking measures."
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12:10 p.m.
The winner of the Nobel economics prize says the most important impact of his work is "the recognition that economic agents are humans" and money decisions are not made strictly rationally.
Richard Thaler, of the University of Chicago, was speaking in a phone call to a news conference immediately after the Nobel committee announced he is the winner of this year's 9-million-kronor ($1.1-million) prize.
The Swedish Academy of Sciences said Thaler's research has built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making.
It says his work expanded economic analysis by considering three psychological traits: Limited rationality, perceptions about fairness and lack of self-control.
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11:45 a.m.
The Nobel economics prize has been awarded to Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago for his contributions to behavioral economics.
The prize was awarded for "understanding the psychology of economics," Swedish Academy of Sciences secretary Goeran Hansson said Monday.
The Nobel committee said Thaler's work shows how human traits affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.
Thaler "is a pioneer in behavioral economics, a research field in which insights from psychological research are applied to economic decision making," a background paper from the academy said. That "incorporates more realistic analysis of how people think and behave when making economic decisions," it said.
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7:15 a.m.
The last of the Nobel prizes to be awarded this year is something of an outlier — Alfred Nobel's will didn't call for its establishment and it honors a science that many doubt is a science at all.
The Sveriges Riksbank (Swedish National Bank) Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was first awarded in 1969, nearly seven decades after the series of prestigious prizes that Nobel called for. Despite its provenance and carefully laborious name, it is broadly considered an equal to the other Nobel and the winner attends the famed presentation banquet.
The winner of the 9-million-kronor ($1.1-million) prize will be announced Monday.
Even well-known recipient Friedrich Hayek expressed misgivings about it, saying the prize may unwisely "strengthen the influence of a few individual economists."
