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The MIT Department of Economics is a department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Undergraduate studies in economics were introduced in the 19th century by institute president Francis Amasa Walker, while the department's Ph.D. program was introduced in 1941. The American Economics Association estimates that MIT and these peers produce half of all tenure track professors at U.S. research universities.[ citation needed ] By 2020, the department has the second highest number of Ph.D. alumni who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in the world (12) only behind Harvard Economics (13) and ahead of UChicago Economics (9). Nine out of 18 Clark medalists since 1999 received Ph.D. degrees from the department.
In the 1890s, economists including Francis Amasa Walker and Davis Rich Dewey taught courses in economics to the undergraduate students. [1] It was known as the Department of Economics and Social Sciences (1932). In 1937, the department established a graduate program, while in 1941, it established a Ph.D. program. [2] In the 1950s and the 1960s, the department expanded its graduate program. [3] In these years, the program became more quantitatively oriented and emphasized technical training. [4] Approximately 25 students enrolled each year. [5] In the 1970s, the first Black American graduate students joined the program as part of a desegregation program. [6]
Among the department's past and current faculty and alumni are several recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics:
James Joseph Heckman is an American economist and Nobel laureate who serves as the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is also a professor at the College, a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD), and Co-Director of Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) Global Working Group. He is also a professor of law at the Law School, a senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and a research associate at the NBER. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1983, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000, which he shared with Daniel McFadden. He is known principally for his pioneering work in econometrics and microeconomics.
Robert Cox Merton is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especially the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model. In 1997 Merton together with Myron Scholes were awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for the method to determine the value of derivatives.
Daniel Little McFadden is an American econometrician who shared the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with James Heckman. McFadden's share of the prize was "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice". He is the Presidential Professor of Health Economics at the University of Southern California and Professor of the Graduate School at University of California, Berkeley.
Oliver Eaton Williamson was an American economist, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which he shared with Elinor Ostrom.
The Chicago school of economics is a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and popularized its principles. Milton Friedman and George Stigler are considered the leading scholars of the Chicago school.
Dale Thomas Mortensen was an American economist, a professor at Northwestern University, and a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Sir Oliver Simon D'Arcy Hart is a British-born American economist, currently the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. Together with Bengt R. Holmström, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2016.
Bengt Robert Holmström is a Finnish economist who is currently Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together with Oliver Hart, he received the Central Bank of Sweden Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2016.
Claudia Dale Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist. She is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. In October 2023, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes”. The third woman to win the award, she was the first woman to win the award solo.
Robert Butler "Bob" Wilson, Jr. is an American economist who is the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus at Stanford University. He was jointly awarded the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, together with his Stanford colleague and former student Paul R. Milgrom, "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats". Two more of his students, Alvin E. Roth and Bengt Holmström, are also Nobel Laureates in their own right.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is an economics award funded by Sveriges Riksbank and administered by the Nobel Foundation.
Douglas Warren Diamond is an American economist. He is currently the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he has taught since 1979. Diamond specializes in the study of financial intermediaries, financial crises, and liquidity. He is a former president of the American Finance Association (2003) and the Western Finance Association (2001-02).
The Princeton University Department of Economics is an academic department of Princeton University, an Ivy League institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. The department is renowned as one of the premier programs worldwide for the study of economics. The university offers undergraduate A.B. degrees, as well as graduate degrees at the Ph.D. level. It is often considered one of the "big five" schools in the field, along with the faculties at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Stanford University, and MIT. According to the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report, its graduate department is ranked as the joint No. 4 in the field of economics, in a four-way tie between it, the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
The 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was divided one half awarded to the American-Canadian David Card "for his empirical contributions to labour economics", the other half jointly to Israeli-American Joshua Angrist and Dutch-American Guido W. Imbens "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships." The Nobel Committee stated their reason behind the decision, saying:
"This year's Laureates – David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens – have shown that natural experiments can be used to answer central questions for society, such as how minimum wages and immigration affect the labour market. They have also clarified exactly which conclusions about cause and effect can be drawn using this research approach. Together, they have revolutionised empirical research in the economic sciences."
The 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was divided equally between the American economists Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dybvig "for research on banks and financial crises" on 10 October 2022. The award was established in 1968 by an endowment "in perpetuity" from Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. Laureates in the Memorial Prize in Economics are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Nobel Committee announced the reason behind their recognition, stating:
"This year's laureates in the Economic Sciences, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, have significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises. An important finding in their research is why avoiding bank collapses is vital."
The 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded jointly to the economist couple Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo-Banerjee and their colleague Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty". Banerjee and Duflo are the sixth married couple to jointly win a Nobel Prize. The press release of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted:
"The research conducted by this year's Laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research. They have laid the foundations of the best way to design measures that reduce global poverty"