Hall, Woodford Win 2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

American economists Robert Hall and Michael Woodford have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday. The award recognizes the duo's work on what the academy described as the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization. The announcement was made in Stockholm.

Hall is a professor at Stanford University and holds the Robert and Carole McNeil Senior Fellow position at the Hoover Institution. Woodford teaches at Columbia University. The two were named together as this year's laureates.

The citation points to research connecting the behavior of individual households and firms with the study of how economies can be stabilized at the aggregate level — a long-running theme in modern macroeconomics. The academy's announcement did not provide further detail on the specific contributions singled out for the prize.

The economics award follows last year's prize, which went to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for having explained innovation-driven economic growth. That trio was honored for work on how technological change drives long-run economic expansion.

This year's economics prize is one of the final Nobel announcements of the season, coming after the academy and the Norwegian Nobel Institute named laureates in the other categories. The economics award is formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.