Thaler is a theorist in behavioral economics who has collaborated with Daniel

Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and others in further defining that field.

In 2017, he was awarded theNobel memorial prizes in economic science for his
contributions to behavioral economics. In its announcement, the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences stated that his "contributions have built a bridge between the
economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making. His empirical
findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and
rapidly expanding field of behavioral economics.

Thaler has written a number of books intended for a lay reader on the subject of
behavioral economics, including Quasi-rational Economics and The Winner's Curse,
the latter of which contains many of his Anomalies columns revised and adapted for
a popular audience. One of his recurring themes is that market-based approaches are
incomplete: he is quoted as saying, "conventional economics assumes that people are
highly-rational—super-rational—and unemotional. They can calculate like a computer
and have no self-control problems.

William D. Nordhaus, a Nobel laureate in economics, has emphasized the importance

of integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis. He advocates
for incorporating the economic impacts of climate change, such as environmental
damages and the cost of mitigating climate-related risks, into traditional economic
models. Nordhaus's work highlights the need for policies that internalize the
external costs of carbon emissions to achieve sustainable and economically
efficient outcomes in the face of climate change.
Nordhaus is arguably the inventor of the modern economics of climate change, with
contributions going back at least to his 1979 book. Then, in the 1990s, he, along
with others, developed the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy.
Nordhaus subscribes to the standard view that greenhouse gas emissions from human
activities constitute a negative externality and, therefore, recommends that the
governments of the world implement a carbon tax. One of his major purposes in
developing and refining his DICE model is to estimate the “social cost of carbon.”
The social cost of carbon is the present value of the net future harms from an
additional ton of emissions in a particular year. A related purpose of Nordhaus’s
DICE model is to estimate the trajectory of the optimal carbon tax over time.

Paul M Romer is known for his contributions to endogenous growth theory, which
emphasizes the role of technological progress driven by human capital and
innovation in long-term economic growth.
Romer's work suggests that investments in research and development, education, and
technology play a crucial role in shaping the trajectory of an economy over the
long run. He advocates for policies that promote innovation and knowledge creation
to drive sustained economic growth.

Robert B. Wilson is an American economist who made significant contributions to

auction theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in
2020. Wilson's work has had a profound impact on both economic theory and practical
applications in auction design.

One of his key contributions is the development of the concept of a common value
auction, where bidders have a common but uncertain value for the item being
auctioned. This concept has important implications for understanding bidding
behavior and optimal auction design in situations where bidders have incomplete
information about the item's value.

Wilson also played a crucial role in the development of the simultaneous multiple-
round auction format, which has been widely used in practice for allocating various
resources, such as radio spectrum licenses.

His work has greatly advanced our understanding of how auctions work and how they
can be designed to achieve efficient outcomes. The impact of his contributions
extends beyond academic research and has influenced the design of real-world
auctions, including those used by governments and private companies.

Abhijit Banerjee’s “Occupational choice and the process of development” (joint with
Andy Newman) and Michael Kremer’s “The O-ring theory of economic development”, both
published in 1993, build bridges between market failures due to asymmetric
information at the micro level and aggregate output and growth at the macro level,
thereby laying the foundations for modern growth theory.

They formalise how individual occupational choice decisions map onto aggregate
employment and output through the creation of firms. Both papers model plausible
mechanisms that create poverty traps, and can therefore explain why societies
starting out in very similar place can end up in very different equilibria.

The mechanism studied in Banerjee and Newman (1993) links inequality to credit
market imperfections, which determine whether individuals engage in wage work,
small entrepreneurship or manage to hire others and start a firm. An economy that
starts poor and equal will remain so because nobody will ever be able to start a
firm, thus forcing everyone into subsistence entrepreneurship.

By contrast, an equally poor economy with enough inequality to allow someone to

start a firm will end up in a higher-income equilibrium. Importantly, the
occupational structure determines inequality, creating vicious or virtuous circles.
The paper has had, and continues to have, a deep influence on how economists think
about growth, in particular how market imperfections link inequality with growth.

Kremer’s O-ring theory (1993) studies growth through the lens of organisational
economics, thereby connecting what goes on inside a single firm with aggregate
economic performance. The paper challenges the view of labour as a homogeneous
factor of production and explicitly models the complementarities between workers
within different talents doing different tasks within the same firm.

The key assumption is that the value produced by a given worker in a given task
depends on the quality of the output produced by workers responsible for other
tasks. This generates assortative matching and implies that small differences in
skill levels will result in huge differences in productivity and income. These are
amplified by the fact that with imperfect information, individuals will under-
invest in education, implying that small differences in education policy will
produce even larger differences in income.

Importantly, the paper opened up the possibility that misallocation, in this case
through the mismatch of workers, can explain cross-country differences. Today, the
misallocation of both capital and labour is seen as key (Restuccia and Rogerson
2017).

Market failures call for government intervention, but whether such interventions
can be effective in practice is an open question. Esther Duflo’s first paper
answered it by providing evidence on the effect of government investments in
schools on educational achievements and earnings.

Duflo (2001) exploits a rapid and very large school construction effort in
Indonesia, which varies in intensity across geographical areas. She combines this
variation with the observation that only children who were sufficiently young when
the schools were built could have possibly benefitted from them. This allows her to
estimate the effect of school construction on enrolment, exploiting ‘differences-
in-differences’ between young and old cohorts and between high programme intensity
and low programme intensity areas.

Banerjee and Duflo further argued that these misallocations can be traced back to
various market imperfections and government failures. Hence, a core step in
understanding, and ultimately alleviating, poverty is to identify sources of the
observed inefficiencies as well as policies that could address them

Paul Milgrom, another Nobel Prize-winning economist, has made significant

contributions to auction theory and the invention of new auction formats. His work
has had a substantial impact on economic theory and practical applications in
auction design.

One of Milgrom's key contributions is his development of the theory of multi-item

auctions, which has important implications for the design of auctions involving
multiple related items, such as spectrum licenses or procurement contracts. This
work has provided valuable insights into the optimal auction formats for selling
multiple items simultaneously.

Milgrom also played a crucial role in the development of the simultaneous ascending
auction format, which has been widely used in practice for allocating various
resources, including radio spectrum licenses and other complex assets.

His research has greatly advanced our understanding of auction theory and has
provided valuable guidance for the design of efficient auction mechanisms in real-
world settings. Milgrom's work has had a profound impact on both economic theory
and practical applications in auction design, contributing to more effective and
efficient allocation of resources in various industries.

Robert B. Wilson is an American economist who made significant contributions to

auction theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in
2020. Wilson's work has had a profound impact on both economic theory and practical
applications in auction design.

One of his key contributions is the development of the concept of a common value
auction, where bidders have a common but uncertain value for the item being
auctioned. This concept has important implications for understanding bidding
behavior and optimal auction design in situations where bidders have incomplete
information about the item's value.

Wilson also played a crucial role in the development of the simultaneous multiple-
round auction format, which has been widely used in practice for allocating various
resources, such as radio spectrum licenses.

His work has greatly advanced our understanding of how auctions work and how they
can be designed to achieve efficient outcomes. The impact of his contributions
extends beyond academic research and has influenced the design of real-world
auctions, including those used by governments and private companies.

In 2021, David Card was recognized for his empirical contributions to labor
economics, particularly his influential work on the minimum wage and immigration.
Joshua D. Angrist’s contributions focused on the development and application of
econometric methods, such as instrumental variables, to address causal
relationships in observational data. Guido W. Imbens was acknowledged for his
advancements in statistical methods, especially in the context of treatment effects
and causal inference.

David Card received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his significant contributions
to empirical labor economics. One notable contribution was his groundbreaking
research on the minimum wage. In the early 1990s, Card conducted a study with Alan
Krueger, challenging conventional economic wisdom that increasing the minimum wage
would lead to job losses. Their empirical analysis of the effects of a minimum wage
hike in the fast-food industry found no significant negative impact on employment.
This study challenged prevailing economic theories and sparked a shift in the
understanding of the minimum wage’s impact on employment. Card’s work emphasized
the importance of empirical evidence and highlighted the complexity of labor market
dynamics, influencing subsequent research and policy discussions on the minimum
wage.

Joshua D. Angrist received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to
empirical microeconomics, particularly his development and application of
econometric methods that deal with causal relationships in observational data. One
of his notable contributions is the advancement of instrumental variables (IV)
analysis.
Angrist’s work on IV methods has been influential in addressing endogeneity issues
in observational studies, where confounding factors can bias estimates of causal
relationships. He developed and refined techniques that use natural experiments or
quasi-random variation as instruments to isolate causal effects, providing more
robust and credible results in empirical research.
By improving the rigor of causal inference in observational studies, Angrist’s
contributions have had a profound impact on how economists analyze data, enhancing
the reliability and validity of empirical findings in various fields within
economics.

Guido W. Imbens received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his significant
contributions to the development of statistical methods, particularly in the field
of causal inference. One of his key contributions is related to the advancement of
methods for dealing with treatment effects.
Imbens has worked extensively on refining and developing statistical techniques to
estimate causal effects in observational studies and randomized experiments. His
work has addressed challenges such as selection bias and unobserved confounding,
providing researchers with robust tools to draw reliable causal inferences from
observational data.
By contributing innovative and rigorous methods for assessing treatment effects,
Imbens has played a crucial role in shaping the field of econometrics and has had a
lasting impact on empirical research in economics. His work has provided
researchers with valuable tools to better understand and draw valid conclusions
about the causal relationships in complex real-world scenarios

Ben Bernanke is an American economist known for his extensive work in

macroeconomics, particularly his research on the Great Depression and his role in
managing the financial crisis of 2007-2008. He served as the Chairman of the
Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, from 2006 to 2014.
Bernanke’s policies during the financial crisis, which included lowering interest
rates and implementing quantitative easing, were significant in stabilizing the
U.S. economy. His tenure at the Fed was marked by his efforts to increase
transparency and communication about Federal Reserve policies.
Douglas W. Diamond is an American economist renowned for his significant
contributions to the field of financial economics. He is particularly famous for
his research on financial intermediaries, financial crises, and liquidity. One of
his most influential works is the Diamond-Dybvig model, developed with Philip
Dybvig, which provides a framework for understanding bank runs and the role of
banks in providing liquidity in the economy. This model has been highly influential
in shaping our understanding of financial crises and the importance of financial
stability mechanisms, like deposit insurance and lender of last resort facilities.
Diamond has been a prominent figure in academic economics, particularly in the
areas of banking, finance, and risk management.Douglas Diamond was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Economics in 2022. He shared this prestigious award with Ben
Bernanke and Philip Dybvig for their research which significantly improved our
understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial
crises. Their work has had a profound impact on both the theoretical and practical
aspects of banking and financial policy.
Philip H. Dybvig is an American economist recognized for his significant
contributions to the field of financial economics. His most notable work is the
Diamond-Dybvig model, developed in collaboration with Douglas Diamond. This model,
introduced in their seminal 1983 paper, has been influential in understanding bank
runs and the role of banks in providing liquidity.

The Diamond-Dybvig model explains how banks’ role in providing liquidity can lead
to bank runs, where depositors rush to withdraw their funds, fearing the bank will
not have enough cash. This model helped in understanding the importance of
financial institutions in the economy and the necessity of mechanisms like deposit
insurance and central bank support to ensure financial stability.

Philip Dybvig, along with Ben Bernanke and Douglas Diamond, was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Economics in 2022. This recognition was for their collective work in
improving our understanding of the role of banks, particularly during financial
crises, and their impact on the economy. Their research has had a significant
influence on both economic theory and policy formulation in the financial sector.

Claudia Goldin is an American economist renowned for her research on labor

economics and economic history, particularly her work on gender economics. As of my
last update in April 2023, she was the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard
University. Goldin has significantly contributed to understanding the history of
women in the labor force, the economics of education, and the gender pay gap. Her
work often combines historical data with rigorous economic analysis, providing deep
insights into long-term trends in labor markets and education.

One of Claudia Goldin’s major contributions to economics is her extensive research

on the gender wage gap. She has explored the historical evolution of women’s roles
in the labor market, examining how changes in the economy, society, and family
structures have influenced women’s employment and earnings over time.

Goldin’s influential work has also delved into the concept of the “U-shaped” female
labor force participation rate in the United States. This concept describes how
women’s participation in the workforce initially declined with industrialization
and then increased in the latter half of the 20th century as societal norms and
economic incentives changed.

Additionally, she has studied the impact of education on the labor market,
particularly how the expansion of education has affected women’s careers and
earnings. Her research often highlights the interplay between gender, economics,
and social norms, offering a comprehensive view of women’s economic history and the
factors contributing to the gender wage gap.