Three US-based economists awarded Nobel Prize for work on banks

A bust of the Nobel Prize founder, Alfred Nobel on display at the Concert Hall during the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm. Picture: Henrik Montgomery/Pool Photo via AP, File

This year’s Nobel Prize in economic sciences has been awarded to former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Ben S Bernanke, and two US-based economists, Douglas W Diamond and Philip H Dybvig, “for research on banks and financial crises”.

The prize was announced by the Nobel panel at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Monday.

The committee said their work had shown in their research “why avoiding bank collapses is vital”.

BREAKING NEWS:
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2022 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig “for research on banks and financial crises.”#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/cW0sLFh2sj

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2022

Nobel prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly £802,000) and will be handed out on December 10.

Unlike the other prizes, the economics award was not established in Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895 but by the Swedish central bank in his memory. The first winner was selected in 1969.

Last year, half of the award went to David Card for his research on how the minimum wage, immigration and education affect the labour market. The other half was shared by Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens for proposing how to study issues that do not easily fit traditional scientific methods.