Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford share the Prize in Economic Sciences for microfoundations of macroeconomic stabilisation

13 October 2026

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2026 to Robert E. Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University.
The citation reads “for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation”.
The Academy said the two built macroeconomic models on a microeconomic foundation instead of on statistical links between macroeconomic variables such as inflation, production and consumption.
A central component of these models is that households and businesses are forward looking when they decide on savings or on product prices.
John Hassler, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said the models are now used by central banks and governments around the world.
The prize amount is 12 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the laureates.
Hall was born in 1943 in Palo Alto and Woodford in 1955 in Chicopee; both took their doctorates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.