Former Fed chair and two U.S. economists win Nobel Prize

Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke spoke at the American Economic Association and Allied Social Science Association Annual Meeting in Atlanta on January 4, 2019.

Elijah Nouvelage / Bloomberg via Getty Images Stockholm — Ben S. Bernanke, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, and two U.S.-based economists, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig, were given this year’s Nobel Prize in economic sciences “for research on banks and financial crises.

” The Nobel panel of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm revealed the award on Monday.

The group stated that their investigation demonstrated “why preventing bank failures is crucial.” The 10th of December will see the awarding of the 10 million Swedish kronor (almost $900,000) Nobel Prizes. The economics prize was not founded in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 testament, but rather by the Swedish central bank in his memory.

In 1969, the first winner was picked. David Card received a portion of the award for his study on the effects of the minimum wage, immigration, and education on the labor market.

The remaining fifty percent was awarded to Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens for proposing how to research situations that do not readily lend themselves to established scientific procedures. The week of Nobel Prize announcements began on October 3 with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in medicine to Swedish scientist Svante Paabo for uncovering secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided crucial insights into our immune system.

Tuesday, three scientists earned the prize in physics jointly. Quantum entanglement is a phenomena demonstrated by the Frenchman Alain Aspect, the American John F. Clauser, and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger.

This phenomenon can be utilized for specialized computing and information encryption. The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and the Danish scientist Morten Meldal on Wednesday for developing a method of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA, and design drugs that can more precisely target diseases such as cancer.

Thursday, French author Annie Ernaux was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. The panel praised her for bravely mining her experiences as a working-class woman to analyze life in France since the 1940s in books that combine fiction and autobiography.

On Friday, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned Belarusian human rights campaigner Ales Bialiatski, the Russian organization Memorial, and the Ukrainian charity Center for Civil Liberties.