2 American economists win Nobel prize for work on managing economic shocks

American economists Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics on Monday for their work on models that have helped governments and central banks manage economic shocks, such as energy crises and inflation.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners in Stockholm, noting that their work created the theoretical foundation to better understand how consumers decide whether to save or spend, insights that make it easier for policymakers worldwide to stabilise economies after fluctuations.

"The laureates’ research has made it possible to manage major macroeconomic crises far more effectively than before,” the Nobel committee wrote in a paper explaining the economists' work. "It has been hugely beneficial during the pandemic and the energy crises of recent years.”

Hall, 83, is affiliated with Stanford University in California. Woodford, who was born in 1955, is affiliated with Columbia University in New York.

Woodford spoke to the committee by phone from New York: "It’s a tremendous honour. It’s a surprise.”

Hall also said the award was a "wonderful surprise.”

Robert E. Hall poses with his wife, Susan Woodward. File/Reuters

"I’ve spent my career trying to understand how the economy works, following interesting questions wherever they led. When I thought I had a new idea, the next step was to find out whether it was actually new, whether it was right, and whether it mattered," he said in a statement released by Stanford.

Improving Keynes' model

For decades, governments responded to economic shocks by following the Depression-era prescriptions of the British economist John Maynard Keynes: intervene in the economy by lowering interest rates and taxes and hiking government spending, thereby encouraging consumers and businesses to spend and invest and help restart growth.

"This is the Keynesian recipe and it worked well – until it didn’t,” said Timo Boppart of the Nobel economics committee.

Policymakers had thought economic management involved simple tradeoffs – unemployment, for instance, would stay low at a time of high inflation and rise when inflation fell. But the " stagflation ” of the 1970s – when the world economy experienced simultaneous high inflation and high unemployment – proved the formula was simplistic.

Some economists argued that government attempts to intervene in the economy were doomed to fail. But Hall and Woodford, in separate contributions, set about improving the Keynesian model to take into account how consumers and businesses actually make decisions about whether to invest and spend.

"Economic outcomes are the result of millions of decisions made at the microlevel by households and businesses,’’ the Nobel committee wrote. "Using models based upon this approach, rather than simply studying the economy from a macro perspective, like a bird’s-eye view,” Hall and Woodford’s research "generated a paradigm shift in the theory of stabilisation policy.”

'Impossible' to forecast future spending

Hall studied the way that consumers' decisions about whether and how much to spend depend on what they expect their future income to be.

"If they are optimistic, they will consume more than if they are pessimistic,’’ the committee wrote. But consumer expectations can change unexpectedly as new information about the economy comes in. Hall found that forecasting future consumer spending is virtually impossible.

Some households can’t borrow or tap savings to tackle economic changes

The idea that consumption is mostly unpredictable "is not good news for forecasters, or policymakers,” Olivier Blanchard, who was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund during the 2008 financial crisis, said by email. "But it is news they must take into account in thinking about the effects of policy.”

Hall also explored the idea that some households are so strapped financially that they can’t borrow or tap savings in response to economic changes. In a 1982 paper with the economist Fredric Mishkin, Hall found that around 80% of households made spending decisions based on their expectations for the future "while the rest lived hand to mouth," the committee wrote.

"The prize is for research that pushes our understanding of macroeconomics from the bottom up, from families and firms making decisions over time, while looking ahead,” Ivan Werning, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an email.

Woodford’s research established that businesses make decisions about prices based on where they think interest rates will go in the future.

"If the business believes that its competitors’ prices and its own costs will increase, it is best to set a higher price than it would with the opposite expectation,” the Nobel committee wrote. "Businesses’ decisions are thus also governed by their expectations."

Therefore, central banks such as the US Federal Reserve, which set short-term interest rates, should provide "clear and credible communication about how they reason and what they plan to do." Central banks have responded to this insight by working harder to explain what they are doing.

The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, has said the trend toward such "forward guidance” went too far. He's trying to scale back how much the US central bank talks about its thinking and its intentions.

'Increase' interest rates

Woodford's research also offered guidance on how central banks should respond to energy price shocks – like the one that followed the US and Israeli attack on Iran in February – that can both feed inflation and send unemployment higher.

"Unlike the traditional Keynesian models, Woodford’s model recommends a cooling measure, such as increased interest rates, to avoid uncontrolled inflation,” the Nobel committee wrote. "His insight has made it possible to respond to recent supply shocks more effectively than during the oil crises of the 1970s.”

During the phone call broadcast at a news conference, Woodford said his work has stressed "the understanding of the people who are in the markets and making decisions about spending.”

Not technically Nobel

The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.

Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, but it is always presented together with the others on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

Nobel honors were announced last week in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

Monday’s award was the second Nobel win for a Stanford University professor this year. Dr Karl Deisseroth shared the medicine prize with Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their work that led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organisation.

Associated Press