US academics win Economics Nobel

Stockholm: US academics Robert Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 Nobel Economics prize on Monday for decades of work developing ground-up models currently used by central banks and finance ministries across the world to stabilise economies.

"With them, we are better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households consume," John Hassler, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement.

Woodford and Hall are frequently name-checked by the world’s top central banks which, after a 2022 inflation surge in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, are currently grappling with the energy shock triggered by the Iran war. One of the laureates’ key insights is that economies could only be kept on an even keel by taking into account the millions of decisions made at a micro-level by households and businesses, rather than by using top-down theories of how economies work.

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