The award for economics is not actually an official Nobel Prize. Officially, the award is called “the Sveriges Riksbank Prize for Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.”
The three researchers were awarded the prize because they have shown how technological progress drives economic growth. According to the organization, the prize winners have taught us that sustained growth cannot be taken for granted. “Economic stagnation, not growth, has been the norm throughout most of human history. Their work shows that we need to be aware of threats to sustained growth and counter them.”
According to the Swedish Committee, the research sheds new light on a fundamental question: why does the economy sometimes grow rapidly and why does it stall at other times?
The three researchers are from the United States, France and Canada. The American Mokyr was born in the Netherlands. The three researchers share a cash prize of 11 million Swedish kronor (more than 1.2 million euros).
In 2024, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson won the award. To date, only three women have received the Nobel Prize in Economics. Thus, like Physics, this category remains dominated by men.
