Economics Laureates

1979: ARTHUR LEWIS, professor of political economy from 1963 until 1983, for his contributions to research on economic problems in developing countries. 

1994: JOHN NASH *50, then senior research mathematician, for his work defining the Nash equilibrium, an important concept in noncooperative game theory.

2002: DANIEL KAHNEMAN, professor of psychology and public affairs, now emeritus, for his work formulating prospect theory, which describes how people view potential gains and losses when making decisions involving risk.

2007: ERIC MASKIN, then visiting lecturer with the rank of professor of economics, for his work on the theory of mechanism design. 

2008: PAUL KRUGMAN, professor of economics and international affairs, now emeritus, for his contributions to two theories related to international trade: new trade theory and new economic geography.

2011: Economics professor CHRISTOPHER SIMS and then-visiting professor of economics THOMAS SARGENT, for their research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.

1992: GARY BECKER ’51, then professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, for his work extending the application of microeconomics to a wide range of human behavior.

2000: JAMES HECKMAN *68 *71, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, for his contributions to econometrics and microeconomics.

2001: A. MICHAEL SPENCE ’66, professor of economics and business at NYU, for his work on markets with asymmetric information.

2012: LLOYD SHAPLEY *53, professor of economics emeritus at UCLA, for his foundational work on the Gale-Shapley algorithm for stable matching.