2008 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Paul Krugman. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 13 October 2008.

The citation

The citation reads: "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity".

The laureate

Paul Krugman was born in 1953 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with Princeton University, Princeton.

Why it matters

Krugman explained why countries trade similar goods with each other and why economic activity concentrates in cities and regions. He is also a well-known newspaper columnist.

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.