The Royal Swedish Academy honoured the two American economists for the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation, work now used by central banks and governments worldwide.

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• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2026 economics prize on 12 October in Stockholm.
• Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford share the award for the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.
• Hall, 83, is professor emeritus at Stanford University and a Hoover Institution fellow, while Woodford, 70, is the John Bates Clark Professor of Economics at Columbia University.
• The award is formally the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, and it was not among the original prizes created in Nobel's 1895 will.
• The prize was established by Sweden's central bank and first awarded in 1969.
• The Academy said their work gives a stable theoretical foundation for the models now used by central banks and governments around the world.
• They showed that economies can be kept stable only by accounting for the millions of decisions made by households and businesses, rather than relying on top-down theories.
• Their research is part of the New Keynesian approach, with Woodford focusing on how businesses set prices.
• The Nobel committee noted that Woodford's model has made it possible to respond to supply shocks more effectively.
• The prize carries 12 million Swedish kronor, shared equally between the two laureates, and will be presented on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
• It was the last Nobel announcement of 2026, coming after medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were announced the previous week.
• This year's literature prize went to Canadian writer Anne Carson, and the peace prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay.

Tags: NobelPrize, RobertHall, MichaelWoodford