2006 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

The 2006 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Edmund S. Phelps. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 9 October 2006.

The citation

The citation reads: "for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy".

The laureate

Edmund S. Phelps was born in 1933 in Evanston, the United States, and is affiliated with Columbia University, New York.

Why it matters

Phelps showed how inflation and unemployment are linked over time, and how expectations shape the choices open to policymakers. His work helped change the way central banks think about inflation.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895. Strictly, this award is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It was established by the Swedish central bank in 1968, but is presented alongside the Nobel Prizes.