Every Nobel Economics Laureate: Books, Prize Work, and Where to Start
The economics prize has recognised 99 people whose ideas range from national accounts and trade to auctions, climate change, institutions, and poverty. This reference list pairs the official reason for each award with a practical route to the laureates’ books and original work.
A reading map, not a ranking
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded every year since 1969. Through the 2025 award, it has gone to 99 individuals. It is commonly called the Nobel Prize in Economics, though it was established by Sweden’s central bank in 1968 rather than in Alfred Nobel’s will.
This is a complete, chronological reading list. Each year links to the official Nobel summary, which gives the authoritative citation and scientific background. Each laureate also has an Amazon search link for books by or about that person. Those are searches rather than product endorsements: availability, editions, formats, and prices vary by marketplace. For many laureates, especially econometricians and theorists, the work behind the prize is a paper, method, or body of research rather than a single popular book. In those cases, the official citation is the better starting point.
The useful way to approach a list this large is by question. Want to understand inflation and monetary policy? Start with Friedman, Mundell, Bernanke, or Krugman. Interested in inequality, development, and poverty? Try Sen, Deaton, Banerjee, Duflo, Kremer, Goldin, or Acemoglu. Curious about business strategy and institutions? Coase, Williamson, Ostrom, Tirole, Hart, Holmstrom, and Robinson offer especially helpful routes in.
1969 to 1979: foundations, growth, trade, and development
1969
Official Nobel citation and background: dynamic models for analysing economic processes.
1970
Official Nobel citation and background: Paul A. Samuelson’s work developing static and dynamic economic theory.
1971
Official Nobel citation and background: Simon Kuznets’s empirically grounded interpretation of economic growth.
1972
Official Nobel citation and background: pioneering contributions to general equilibrium and welfare theory.
1973
Official Nobel citation and background: Wassily Leontief’s input-output method and its application to economic problems.
1974
Official Nobel citation and background: theory of money and economic fluctuations, alongside analysis of social and institutional interdependence.
1975
Official Nobel citation and background: the theory of optimum allocation of resources.
1976
Official Nobel citation and background: Milton Friedman’s work on consumption, monetary history and theory, and the limits of stabilisation policy.
1977
Official Nobel citation and background: international trade and international capital movements.
1978
Official Nobel citation and background: Herbert A. Simon’s research on decision-making in economic organisations.
1979
Official Nobel citation and background: economic development, with particular attention to developing countries.
1980 to 1989: markets, macroeconomics, and measurement
1980
Official Nobel citation and background: Lawrence R. Klein’s econometric models and their use in analysing fluctuations and policy.
1981
Official Nobel citation and background: James Tobin’s analysis of financial markets and their links to spending, employment, production, and prices.
1982
Official Nobel citation and background: George J. Stigler’s studies of industrial structure, markets, and regulation.
1983
Official Nobel citation and background: Gerard Debreu’s rigorous reformulation of general-equilibrium theory.
1984
Official Nobel citation and background: Richard Stone’s systems of national accounts, a foundation for empirical economic analysis.
1985
Official Nobel citation and background: Franco Modigliani’s analyses of saving and financial markets.
1986
Official Nobel citation and background: James M. Buchanan Jr.’s contractual and constitutional approach to political decision-making.
1987
Official Nobel citation and background: Robert M. Solow’s contributions to economic-growth theory.
1988
Official Nobel citation and background: Maurice Allais’s contributions to markets and efficient resource use.
1989
Official Nobel citation and background: Trygve Haavelmo’s probability foundations for econometrics and analysis of simultaneous economic structures.
1990 to 1999: finance, institutions, information, and incentives
1990
Official Nobel citation and background: pioneering work in financial economics.
1991
Official Nobel citation and background: Ronald H. Coase’s explanation of transaction costs and property rights.
1992
Official Nobel citation and background: Gary S. Becker’s extension of microeconomics to human behaviour beyond markets.
1993
Official Nobel citation and background: economic history renewed through theory and quantitative methods.
1994
Official Nobel citation and background: equilibria in non-cooperative game theory.
1995
Official Nobel citation and background: Robert E. Lucas Jr.’s rational-expectations hypothesis and its impact on macroeconomics.
1996
Official Nobel citation and background: incentives under asymmetric information.
1997
Official Nobel citation and background: a method for valuing derivatives.
1998
Official Nobel citation and background: Amartya Sen’s contributions to welfare economics.
1999
Official Nobel citation and background: Robert A. Mundell’s analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under exchange-rate regimes and of optimum currency areas.
2000 to 2009: evidence, behaviour, and institutions
2000
Official Nobel citation and background: methods for selective samples and discrete choice.
2001
Official Nobel citation and background: markets with asymmetric information.
2002
Official Nobel citation and background: judgment under uncertainty and experimental economics.
2003
Official Nobel citation and background: Robert F. Engle III’s ARCH method for time-varying volatility and Clive W. J. Granger’s cointegration method for common trends.
2004
Official Nobel citation and background: dynamic macroeconomics, including policy time consistency and business-cycle forces.
2005
Official Nobel citation and background: game-theory analysis of conflict and cooperation.
2006
Official Nobel citation and background: Edmund S. Phelps’s analysis of intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy.
2007
Official Nobel citation and background: the foundations of mechanism-design theory.
2008
Official Nobel citation and background: Paul Krugman’s analysis of trade patterns and economic geography.
2009
Official Nobel citation and background: governance of the commons and the boundaries of the firm.
2010 to 2019: labour, markets, behaviour, climate, and poverty
2010
Official Nobel citation and background: markets with search frictions.
- Peter A. Diamond: Amazon books
- Dale T. Mortensen: Amazon books
- Christopher A. Pissarides: Amazon books
2011
Official Nobel citation and background: empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.
2012
Official Nobel citation and background: stable allocations and market design.
2013
Official Nobel citation and background: empirical analysis of asset prices.
2014
Official Nobel citation and background: Jean Tirole’s analysis of market power and regulation.
2015
Official Nobel citation and background: Angus Deaton’s analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.
2016
Official Nobel citation and background: contract theory.
2017
Official Nobel citation and background: Richard H. Thaler’s contributions to behavioural economics.
2018
Official Nobel citation and background: long-run macroeconomic analysis of climate change and technological innovation.
2019
Official Nobel citation and background: experimental approaches to alleviating global poverty.
2020 to 2025: auctions, causality, banking, work, and growth
2020
Official Nobel citation and background: auction theory and new auction formats.
2021
Official Nobel citation and background: David Card’s labour-economics evidence, plus methods for causal analysis developed by Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens.
2022
Official Nobel citation and background: research on banks and financial crises.
2023
Official Nobel citation and background: Claudia Goldin’s work on women’s labour-market outcomes.
2024
Official Nobel citation and background: how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.
2025
Official Nobel citation and background: Joel Mokyr on the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress; Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt on creative destruction and sustained growth.
How to use the links well
An Amazon search is useful for finding accessible editions, but it does not tell you why a laureate mattered. Use the two links together. Read the Nobel summary first to identify the award-winning contribution. Then use the Amazon result to find a book written for your level, a collected edition, or a reliable introduction to a technical scholar whose prize work was published in journals.
For a first pass, choose one broad public-facing book and one more technical source. For example, readers interested in markets and institutions might start with Coase, Ostrom, Acemoglu, or Robinson; readers interested in choices and behaviour might begin with Simon, Kahneman, or Thaler. A title that appears in a marketplace is not proof that it represents the prize-winning work, so check the author, edition, and the official citation before buying.
The smallest sensible test is reversible and costs nothing: read a library copy, publisher sample, or academic preview of one chapter before purchasing. If the vocabulary and examples hold your attention, buy or borrow the fuller work. If they do not, use the official Nobel explanation to choose another laureate whose question is closer to yours.
This article is for education and reading selection, not investment advice. Economic ideas can sharpen a question, but they do not by themselves determine a personal financial decision.
