Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the Nobel Prize for their models informing fiscal and monetary measures to smooth out economic up and downs.

The sign for the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ahead of the announcement of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics in Stockholm, Sweden, October 12, 2026. REUTERS/Tom Little STOCKHOLM,

American professors Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford have won the 2026 Nobel prize in economics for developing new economic models that help governments and central banks stabilize their economies to minimize the impact of external shocks.

The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.