Robert Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for developing models that help central bankers and finance ministers stabilise economies and avoid long recessions and runaway inflation.
The Nobel Prize committee recognised their work on the "microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation". Their research provides policymakers with improved tools to manage economic fluctuations, smoothing periods of rapid growth and contraction.
Hall works at Stanford University in California. Woodford is based at Columbia University in New York. Both are US economists.
The prize reflects the value economists and policymakers place on understanding how central banks and governments can use policy levers to prevent economic crises. The models developed by Hall and Woodford appear to address how individual economic actors behave in ways that aggregate to affect the broader economy, a key challenge in macroeconomic theory.
The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to recognise outstanding contributions to the field of economics.