Stockholm, Sweden

The Nobel Prize for Economics Sciences 2023 has been awarded to American economic historian and professor Claudia Goldin on Monday (Oct 9) for her work in examining the wage inequality between men and women “through centuries,” said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  

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The prestigious award formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to the 77-year-old Harvard professor, “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes.” 

The award, worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($999,137), marks the end of this year's Nobel Prizes season.

Nobel economics prize 2023

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“This year’s Laureate in the Economic Sciences…provided the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries,” said the award-giving body, in a statement. 

It added, “Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.” 

Goldin is only the third woman, after Elinor Ostrom (2009) and Esther Duflo (2019), to win the Nobel economics prize. Speaking about her reaction, Hans Ellegren, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said “She was surprised and very, very happy.”

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Goldin’s work

In 1990, Goldin also became the first woman to be tenured at the Harvard economics department. Her book “Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women,” was a significantly influential examination of the roots of wage inequality.

Through her work, she has noted how female participation in the labour market did not have an upward trend, as many may have expected but rather over a 200-year period it is a U-shaped curve. 

Goldin also showed the impact of the contraceptive pill on women’s career and marriage decisions and even their surname changes as social indicators and the reasons why women are now the majority of undergraduates.

Goldin has “trawled the archives and collected over 200 years of data from the US,” said the jury. 

“She studied something that many people, many historians, for instance, simply decided not to study before because they didn’t think these data existed,” said Nobel committee member Randi Hjalmarsson, and called her “a detective”. 

“Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future,” Jakob Svensson, chair of the committee for the prize in economic sciences, said in a statement.

Controversy surrounding the prize

While the prize is arguably the most prestigious award in the field of economics, it is not without controversy. 

Over the years, many people have questioned the validity of the Nobel Prize itself since it was not one of the original prizes created at Alfred Nobel’s will but was a later addition established and funded by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

In 2022, this prize was awarded to American economists Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their research on banks and financial crises.

(With inputs from agencies) 

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