On Monday, the annual Nobel prizes season will come to an end with the award for economics. Experts in the fields of credit, the job market, or inequities are likely to be among the nominees.
Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor and US labor economist, is the front-runner to receive the honor, which will be unveiled in Stockholm at 11:45 a.m. (09:45 GMT).
Only two women have received the economics prize since it was originally given out in 1969, Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and Esther Duflo in 2019. Of all the Nobel prizes, the economics prize has the fewest number of female winners.
“Equality and diversity are priorities and the committee encourages it in the nominations,” Micael Dahlen, a professor in marketing at the Stockholm School of Economics, told AFP.
“But the number one priority is to choose a field of research… which decides who the candidates can be,” he continued.
Dahlen said that Goldin’s research, which has centered on inequality and the female labor force, is always being discussed.
The award for research on banks during turbulent times was given to US economists Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dybvig last year.
Numerous analysts have predicted that the selection will not result in another financial victory.
“In a wider sense the same subject matter can be rewarded one year after another, but it is more common that this is not the case,” Mikael Carlsson, professor of economics at Uppsala University in Sweden explained.
Carlson added that he thought the work of Japan’s Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and Briton John H. Moore could be given the nod.
Their “research, which has provided information, among other things, on interest rate cycles and real estate markets, is well placed this year, very topical issues,” Dahlen noted.
Analytics group Clarivate, which keeps an eye on potential Nobel science laureates, suggests Frenchman Thomas Piketty, who rose to prominence with his book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” is another favourite.
Piketty, a frequent subject of prize debates in recent years, may share an award with fellow countrymen Gabriel Zucman and Franco-American Emmanuel Saez.
Raj Chetty, an expert on the conditions of economic opportunity and social mobility, and Edward L. Glaeser, known for his study of urban economics, were also included by the institute, which bases its projections on the quantity of researcher citations.
