Nobel Prizes

Economics, Nobel Prize in

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the founder of the Nobel Prize, was instituted by the Bank of Sweden (the world’s oldest central bank) for its three-hundredth anniversary in 1968, sixty-seven years after the first Nobel Prizes were awarded for other fields. Known also as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and less formally as the Nobel Prize in Economics, it is the only prize granted that was not specified in Alfred Nobel’s will. Its addition was justified as a recognition that the use of quantitative methods had made economics a science like physics and chemistry.

The Nobel Prize in Economics is awarded each year for outstanding intellectual contributions to the field of economics. The laureates are chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, from nominations of about one hundred living persons made by qualified nominators each year. Prizewinners receive their award during a ceremony in Stockholm, together with the laureates in the other fields. No more than three people can share the prize for a given year. The names of the nominees can only be published after fifty years.

From 1969, when the first prize was awarded, up to 2006, fifty-eight people have received the Nobel in economics. Economics is the only discipline in which no woman has ever been awarded a Nobel. The United States has dominated the award, with forty laureates, followed by nine laureates from the United Kingdom. The University of Chicago has employed the highest number of laureates in economics, nine up to 2006, followed by Harvard University and U.C. Berkeley, with four laureates each. Out of the thirty-eight prizes awarded up to 2006, seventeen were shared. With an average age of sixty-six at the time of the award, laureates in economics are the oldest to receive the prize—the youngest are in physics, with an average age of fifty-four. The youngest person to receive the prize in economics was Kenneth Arrow, in 1972, at the age of fifty-one; the oldest was Thomas Schelling, in 2005, at the age of eighty-four.

The prize has been awarded to work ranging from theory to empirical application, from macroeconomics to microeconomics, from economic policy to economic history, and from mathematical modeling to psychology. The early awards were focused on acknowledging the past contributions of “giants” such as Paul Samuelson (1970), the father of the modern economic theory; Simon Kuznets (1971), the father of the empirical analysis of economic growth; John Hicks and Kenneth Arrow (1972), pioneering contributors to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory; Wassily Leontief (1973), who developed the input-output method and a number of applications to economic problems; and Milton Friedman (1976), whose long list of contributions include consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and stabilization policy.

The scope of the award has been broadened over the decades, while the work awarded has become more specialized. One could already see these trends in the 1980s, with prizes given for work on the theory of economic growth (Robert Solow, 1987), financial economics (James Tobin, 1981; Franco Modigliani, 1985; Harry Markowitz, Merton Miller, and William Sharpe, 1990), empirical work and econometrics (Lawrence Klein, 1980; Richard Stone, 1984; Trygve Haavelmo, 1989), and economic

theory (George Stigler, 1982; Gerard Debreu, 1983; James Buchanan, 1986; Maurice Allais, 1988).

These trends have become even more apparent in recent years. Since 1990, the prize has been awarded for contributions that address economic problems with tools and results from fields outside economics, such as mathematics and game theory (John Harsanyi, John Nash and Reinhard Selten, 1994; Robert J. Aumann and Thomas Schelling, 2005), psychology (Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith, 2002), and philosophy (Amartya Sen, 1998). It has also been given for contributions that apply economic tools to other fields, such as work that uses microeconomic analysis to explain a wide range of human behavior and interaction (Gary Becker, 1992), and work using economic theory and quantitative methods to explain economic and institutional change in history (Robert Fogel and Douglass North, 1993). It has been awarded for econometrics (James Heckman and Daniel McFadden, 2000; Robert Engle and Clive Granger, 2003), and for broadening and deepening economic theory by incorporating transaction costs and property rights (Ronald Coase, 1991), rational expectations (Robert Lucas, 1995), and asymmetric information (George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz, 2001). It has also been given for work with direct policy implications, such as that addressing monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes (Robert Mundell, 1999) and the intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy (Phelps 2006), and for contributions that were first criticized as too specialized and limited in scope, but later proved more influential and applicable than most had expected, such as the pricing formula for financial derivatives (Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, 1997).

The Nobel Prize in Economics has been a source of controversy since its introduction. Some have even suggested that the award should be discontinued. Its very name has been questioned, as it was not part of Alfred Nobel’s bequest. It has also been argued that the criteria for an award for a social science cannot be as objective as for the other fields, although similar concerns have been raised for the prizes for peace and literature. Indeed, this may explain why it takes much longer to receive the Nobel in Economics after a contribution is made than in any other field—an average of thirty-three years, compared with an average of twelve years for prizes in the hard sciences—which has also been a source of controversy. Finally, some of the recent selections have been criticized for honoring contributions that are too narrowly focused.

The prize has affected both the field of economics itself and the field’s impact. It has been argued that the prospect of receiving a Nobel Prize motivates economists to pursue original research ideas. Although there has been no empirical study documenting such an effect, it is consistent with one of the most basic laws in economics that people respond to incentives. The impact that an economist can have on the literature, on economic policy, and on public opinion is substantially enhanced if they can add the title Nobel Laureate after their name. Elite universities lose no opportunity to advertise the laureates on their faculty to attract new faculty members and graduate students. Even Hollywood has been inspired by the prestige of the prize, as reflected in the Oscar-winning movie A Beautiful Mind, about the life of John Nash.

SEE ALSO Economics

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baffes, John, and Athanasios Vamvakidis. Are You Old Enough for a Nobel Prize? Washington, DC: World Bank and International Monetary Fund. (Forthcoming).

Feldman, Burton. 2000. The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige. New York: Arcade.

Jones, Benjamin F. 2005. Age and Great Invention. NBER Working Paper 11359. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Nasar, Sylvia. 1998. A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994. New York: Touchstone. Reissued as A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash. New York: Touchstone, 2001.

Nobel Prize Internet Archive. http://www.almaz.com/nobel/.

Nobelprize.org. http://nobelprize.org/index.html.

Shalev, Baruch A. 2002. One Hundred Years of Nobel Prizes. Los Angeles: Americas Group.

Weinberg, Bruce A., and David W. Galenson. 2005. Creative Careers: The Life Cycles of Nobel Laureates in Economics. NBER Working Paper 11799. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Athanasios Vamvakidis

Nobel Peace Prize

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Nobel Peace Prize is an annual award established by Alfred Nobel and, according to his will, given to “the person who shall have done the most or best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Nobel gave the Norwegians the exclusive task of selecting each year’s recipient, as opposed to the Swedes, who award each of the other Nobel Prizes. The Nobel Committee consists of five members selected by the Norwegian parliament (known as the “Storting”). Since the prize’s inception, all committee members have been Norwegian nationals. Prize recipients, therefore, generally share the liberal internationalist ideals of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Over the years prizes have been given to a wide range of individuals and organizations that promote a variety of peace and human-rights issues. Recipients of the prize have included government officials, dissidents, nongovernmental organizations, and intergovernmental organizations. Between 1901—when the first prizes were awarded to Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, and Frédéric Passy, founder and president of the French Peace Society—and 2006, there have been 112 Nobel PeacePrizes awarded to ninety-three individuals and nineteen organizations. The International Committee of the Red Cross has received the prize three times (1917, 1944, and 1963). Branches and leaders of the United Nations as well as individuals and organizations that have worked toward conventional and nuclear disarmament have been frequent recipients of the prize.

Controversy has surrounded some selections, as the committee has tried to balance between complying with Nobel’s will and using the prize to promote Norwegian interests and values. The awarding of the 1906 Peace Prize to Theodore Roosevelt is one early example of this balance. Roosevelt was the first head of state to be so honored. While the prize was given because of his involvement in the mediation of the Japanese-Russian war, the former Rough Rider enjoyed a rather bellicose reputation. Nevertheless, Roosevelt was chosen in part because Norway, which had just received its independence from Sweden in 1905, was, as one Norwegian newspaper put it, in need of a “large, friendly neighbor.” In addition, the prize signaled the willingness of the committee to at times award prizes based on specific actions rather than the overall “peacefulness” of the person in question. Prizes to such figures as Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (1973), Yasir Arafat (1994), and Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin (1978) similarly reflect this tendency.

The Nobel Committee has also used the prize to punish, rather than reward, behavior. For example, the 1935 prize was given to Carl von Ossietzky, a German journalist and dissident who wrote scathing articles against the Nazi Party for which he was sent to a German concentration camp. The prize was given to Ossietzky as much to condemn German behavior as it was to honor Ossietzky. Other cases in which the committee has used the prize to highlight atrocities being carried out by specific governments include Shirin Ebadi of Iran in 2003, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor in 1996, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (Burma) in 1991, Desmond Tutu of South Africa in 1984, Lech Walesa in 1983, Martin Luther King Jr. of the United States in 1964, and Albert Lutuli of South Africa in 1960.

SEE ALSO Arafat, Yasir; Bunche, Ralph Johnson; Carter, Jimmy; Gorbachev, Mikhail; Microfinance; Peace; Rabin, Yitzhak; Truth and Reconciliation Commissions; War; War and Peace

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams, Irwin. 2003. The Words of Peace: The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates of the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed. New York Newmarket Press.

Lundestad, Geir. 2001. The Nobel Peace Prize 1901–2000. In The Nobel Prize: The First 100 Years, eds. Agneta Wallin Levinovitz and Nils Ringertz, 163–196. London: Imperial College Press and World Scientific Publishing. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/lundestadreview/index.html.

David R. Andersen

Nobel Peace Prize The world's most prestigious prize, awarded for the ‘preservation of peace’. It goes back to the legacy of Alfred Nobel (b. 1833, d. 1896), who wanted to use his fortune, made by his invention of dynamite, for the good of humanity through the creation of a Nobel Foundation. This would use the interest accruing from his legacy to finance a prize for physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace. While the first four prizes are awarded in Sweden, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded on Nobel's birthday (10 December) in Oslo, by the King of Norway, the winner being chosen by a committee made up of five members of the Norwegian Parliament.

Table 16. Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1901–1995

Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine The Nobel Prizes were established in 1901 by the Nobel Foundation, which was endowed by the Swedish industrial chemist and philanthropist, Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833–96).

Alfred was born in Stockholm, the son of an industrialist and inventor Immanuel Nobel, who used explosives extensively in his construction business. After schooling and private tutors in Stockholm and St Petersburg, where his father moved after a business failure, Alfred travelled extensively in Western Europe, learning languages and attending chemistry lectures and demonstrations. Throughout his life he was to retain a special fondness for English literature and poetry. He returned to St Petersburg just before the Crimean War (1853–56), and worked in the family's munitions company, manufacturing naval mines that prevented the British Navy from entering St Petersburg. Immanuel went bankrupt in 1859, and the family returned to Sweden. During the next few years father and son both worked on the newly-discovered explosives, gun cotton and nitroglycerin. A tragedy hit the family in 1864 when their nitroglycerine factory blew up, killing several people, including Alfred's younger brother. From that time on, Alfred Nobel tried to devise a safer way to deal with nitroglycerine, and in 1867 patented ‘dynamite’, a more stable form of the chemical. Further developments and inventions, including synthetic rubber and artificial silk, contributed to Alfred Nobel's personal wealth, and by the time of his death he held over 350 patents.

After his death his Will of November 27, 1895 specified that the bulk of his estate should be deposited in a fund, the interest from which should be divided into five parts to be used for five annual Prizes, in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. A close friend, Countess Bertha von Suttner, had become increasingly critical of the late nineteenth-century arms race, and correspondingly active in the peace movement, and she may well have influenced Nobel's decision to include in his Will an award to individuals or organizations who promoted peace. In 1905 Bertha was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps not surprisingly, several of Nobel's relatives contested the Will.

One of the five shares was to be awarded to the person ‘who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of Physiology or Medicine’. The Royal Caroline Medico-Surgical Institute in Stockholm, today the Karolinska Institute, was entrusted with the task of selecting the winners of the award. Why did Nobel select this field for attention? During much of his life, he had suffered from poor health, complaining of indigestion, headaches, and the occasional bout of depression. He was known to be interested in medical science and was absolutely fascinated when the medical use of nitroglycerine became well known for relieving pain in angina pectoris. In 1890 his own doctors suggested its use, which prompted Nobel to write to a friend ‘isn't it the irony of ironies that I have been prescribed N/G 1 [nitroglycerine], to be taken internally.’

The awards became newsworthy almost immediately — their monetary value was substantially more than any other prize, and even at the end of the twentieth century, when other sources of spectacular awards are more common, a Nobel Prize carries unique cachet and prestige. Some of the greatest names in twentieth century medical science have received awards. Conversely, other great names have not. The restriction that the award can be shared by a maximum of three individuals in any one year, and cannot be awarded posthumously, has helped to fuel some bitter controversies over the apportioning of credit and priority for discoveries.

E. M. Tansey

Bibliography

Fox, D. M., Meldrum, M., Rezak, I. (ed) (1990). Nobel Laureates in Medicine or Physiology: a biographical dictionary. Garland Publishing, New York.
Sohlman, R. (1983). The legacy of Alfred Nobel. The Bodley Head Ltd, London.
Zuckerman, H. (1977). Scientific elite: Nobel laureates in the United States. The Free Press, New York.

Nobel Prize award given for outstanding achievement in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, peace, or literature. The awards were established by the will of Alfred Nobel , who left a fund to provide annual prizes in the five areas listed above. These prizes were first given in 1901. The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was established in 1968 from funds provided by the Swedish national bank, Sveriges Riksbank, and was first awarded in 1969. Each prize consists of a gold medal, a sum of money, and a diploma with the citation of award. The amount of money available for each prize varies from year to year. The Nobel Prizes are awarded without regard to nationality; the judges are, by the terms of Nobel's will, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (physics and chemistry, as well as economic science), the Swedish Royal Caroline Medico-Surgical Institute (physiology or medicine), the Swedish Academy (literature), and a committee elected by the Norwegian parliament (peace). The awards are made on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death, the Peace Prize being presented in Oslo and the others in Stockholm. A prize is sometimes shared; several times the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to an organization. There may be one or more years in which a prize or prizes may not be awarded; this has happened most often with the Peace Prize. See the tables entitled Nobel Prizes and Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for lists of persons who have been awarded the prizes.

Nobel Prizes, provided by the bequest of Alfred B. Nobel (1833–96), Swedish scientist, have been given annually since 1901 for the most significant contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, medicine, and literature, and in the cause of peace. Awards are determined by committees at Stockholm and Oslo, and may be given to persons of any nationality. Each prize amounts to approximately $825,000 (1993). American‐born recipients in literature are Sinclair Lewis (1930), O'Neill (1936), Pearl Buck (1938), T.S. Eliot (1948), Faulkner (1950), Hemingway (1954), Steinbeck (1962); Saul Bellow (1976), who, though born in Montreal, was raised in Chicago and calls himself “a Chicagoan out and out”; and Toni Morrison (1993). Recipients have also included two naturalized U.S. citizens who write in other languages: Isaac B. Singer (1978) and Czeslaw Milosz (1980).

Nobel Prizes were established under the will of Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833–96), a Swedish chemist distinguished in the development of explosives, by which the interest on the greater part of his large fortune is distributed in annual prizes for the most important discoveries in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine respectively, to the person who shall have most promoted ‘the fraternity of nations’ (the Nobel Peace Prize), and to the ‘person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency’.

For a list of Nobel Prize for Literature winners, see Appendix.

Nobel Prize any of six international prizes awarded annually for outstanding work in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, economics, and the promotion of peace. The Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, were established by the will of the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel (1833–96), who made a large fortune from his invention of dynamite (1866), gelignite, and other high explosives. The prizes are traditionally awarded on 10 December, the anniversary of his death. The awards are decided by members of Swedish learned societies or, in the case of the peace prize, the Norwegian Parliament.

No·bel Prize / ˈnōbel/ • n. any of six international prizes awarded annually for outstanding work in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, economics (since 1969), and the promotion of peace. The Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, were established by the will of Alfred Nobel and are traditionally awarded on December 10, the anniversary of his death. The awards are decided by boards of deputies appointed by Swedish learned societies and, in the case of the peace prize, by the Norwegian Parliament. DERIVATIVES: No·bel Prize win·ner n.

Nobel Prize for Literature, has been awarded in recognition of their dramatic writings to the following: Beckett, Samuel, 1969; Benavente, Jacinto, 1922; Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne, 1903; Echegaray, José, 1904; Hauptmann, Gerhart, 1912; Maeterlinck, Maurice, 1911; O'Neill, Eugene, 1936; Pirandello, Luigi, 1934; Sartre, Jean-Paul (who declined it), 1964; Shaw, George Bernard, 1925; Soyinka, Wole, 1986.

Nobel Prizes Awards given each year for outstanding contributions in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, economics, and world peace. Established in 1901 by the will of Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel, the prizes are awarded annually on December 10. Committees based in Sweden and Norway select the winners.

http://www.nobel.se

NOBEL PRIZES

NOBEL PRIZES. SeePrizes and Awards .