This year’s Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences goes to Claudia Goldin from Harvard University for her research on the role of women in the labor market. The 77-year-old will be honored for “uncovering the main causes of gender differences in the labor market,” said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Goldin is the third woman to be honored with the award and the first to receive the award alone. The academy explained that the fact that women’s choices in the labor market were and are often limited by marriage and responsibility for home and family is the focus of Goldin’s analyzes and explanatory models.
This year’s Nobel Prizes are endowed with eleven million Swedish crowns per prize category, i.e. around 950,000 euros. Last year, former US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and fellow American economists Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig were honored. They received prestigious Nobel medals for their research into banks and financial crises.
In general, the Nobel Prize in economics often goes to winners who come from the USA or at least work there. The only Nobel Prize winner in economics from Germany to date has been the Bonn scientist Reinhard Selten, who received the award in 1994 together with John Nash and John Harsanyi for their groundbreaking contributions to non-cooperative game theory.
The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is the only one that does not go back to the will of dynamite inventor and prize donor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). It has been sponsored by the Swedish Reichsbank since the late 1960s and is therefore, strictly speaking, not one of the classic Nobel Prizes. Nevertheless, it will be ceremoniously presented along with the other Nobel Prizes on the anniversary of Nobel’s death, December 10th.
The announcement of the Nobel Prize in Economics is the last this year. The winners in the other categories were already announced last week. An overview:
Medicine: Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman’s research made mRNA vaccines against Covid-19 possible. It started with an encounter at the copier.
Physics: Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier receive the Nobel Prize for their experiments with light pulses, which make rapid processes in atoms measurable. A Munich scientist will also be honored. Why their results are revolutionary.
Chemistry: Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov share the Nobel Prize for the development of “quantum dots”, which are now found in many everyday devices. There was a glitch before the announcement.
Literature: Mystic, playwright even in prose, literary teacher: the Norwegian Jon Fosse travels in many dimensions – and meets himself in his novels.
Peace: Iranian women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi has been fighting for a free country for decades, including during last year’s protests. Who is the woman who is currently back in prison – as she has been for more than half her life?