2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 11 October 2010.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their analysis of markets with search frictions". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Peter A. Diamond was born in 1940 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. Dale T. Mortensen was born in 1939 in Enterprise, the United States, and is affiliated with Northwestern University, Evanston and Aarhus University, Aarhus. Christopher A. Pissarides was born in 1948 in Nicosia, Cyprus, and is affiliated with the London School of Economics and Political Science, London.

Why it matters

Their work explains why unemployment can exist alongside unfilled vacancies, as workers and employers take time to find each other. Pissarides, born in Cyprus, is a professor at the London School of Economics.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. 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.