According to statements by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm earlier today, Claudia Goldin was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on women’s labor market outcomes, in addition to an award worth 11 million kroner ($1 million).
Before Goldin, only two women received this award. The honor came in celebration of her research that advanced our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.
Born in 1946 in New York, Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist, who is currently the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She is a co-director of the NBER’s Gender in the Economy Study Group and was the director of the NBER’s Development of the American Economy program from 1989 to 2017.
Goldin’s research covers a wide range of topics, including the female labor force, the gender gap in earnings, income inequality, technological change, education, and immigration. Most of her research interprets the present through the lens of the past and explores the origins of current issues of concern.
Notably, the annual Nobel Prizes that celebrate achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace were first established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died back in 1896.
Riksbank, which earned its name in memory of Alfred Nobel, added the Prize for Economic Sciences in 1968.
So far, only three women have been able to win the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, with Golden preceded by Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and Esther Duflo in 2019.
