Advanced information on the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, 2004

For more than two decades, the theory of markets with asymmetric information has been a vital and lively field of economic research. Today, models with imperfect information are indispensable instruments in the researcher's toolbox. Countless applications extend from traditional agricultural...

Economists study how societies allocate resources. Some allocation problems are solved by the price system: high wages attract workers into a particular occupation, and high energy prices induce consumers to conserve energy. In many instances, however, using the price system would encounter...

This year’s Prize to Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth extends from abstract theory developed in the 1960s, over empirical work in the 1980s, to ongoing efforts to find practical solutions to real-world problems. Examples include the assignment of new doctors to hospitals, students to schools, and...

There is no way to predict whether the price of stocks and bonds will go up or down over the next few days or weeks. But it is quite possible to foresee the broad course of the prices of these assets over longer time periods, such as, the next three to five years. These findings, which may seem...

The behavior of asset prices is essential for many important decisions, not only for professional investors but also for most people in their daily life. The choice between saving in the form of cash, bank deposits or stocks, or perhaps a single-family house, depends on what one thinks of the...

To what extent should the government intervene in the marketplace? Economists often consider fiercely competitive markets to be in the public interest. When producers in such markets strive to earn a profit, they are led — as if by an invisible hand — to deliver high quality at low cost. But...

Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time. He has made important theoretical research contributions in a number of areas, but most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms.

Prize Seminar, December 8, 1994.

The field of econometrics is concerned with estimating economic relations and testing whether postulated relations conform fully with reality. In an article in Econometrica in 1943 and in his doctoral thesis entitled, The Probability Approach in Econometrics (1944), Haavelmo showed that the...