Ben Bernanke, the former US Federal Reserve chair, has been awarded this year’s Nobel prize in economics together with Douglas Diamond of the University of Chicago and Philip Dybvig of Washington University, for their work on the role of banks in the economy and financial crises.
The committee handing out the SKr10mn ($886,000) award said the laureates’ work, which began in the early 1980s, had “improved our ability to avoid both serious crises and expensive bailouts”. The trio will share the prize equally.
“We didn’t know it at the time, but 15 years ago, much of the world stood at the brink of a devastating economic crisis. Most of us were unprepared for it. A few academic economists were both prepared and worried,” said Hans Ellegren, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on Monday.