This paper identifies the determinants of the Nobel Prize Award. The analysis is analogous in spirit to Hamermesh and Schmidt (Econometrica, 2003) on the election of Econometric Society fellows. It is found that the number of citations, age and nationality have significant impacts on the odds of winning the Nobel. We provide the first statistical evidence that John Bates Clark medalists and individuals affiliated with the University of Chicago have a higher chance of winning the Prize.Nobel Prize; John Bates Clark Medal; Logit Model.

Benjamin Everard

Cally Choi

Terence tai-leung Chong

English

Research Papers in Economics

     
 
 
  
  
Volume 29, Issue 2 
  
Who will win the Nobel Prize? 
  
 
 
Terence tai-leung Chong  
Department of Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 
Cally Choi  
London School of Economics 
Benjamin Everard  
George Washington University
Abstract 
This paper identifies the determinants of the Nobel Prize Award. The analysis is analogous in spirit to Hamermesh and 
Schmidt (Econometrica, 2003) on the election of Econometric Society fellows. It is found that the number of citations, 
age and nationality have significant impacts on the odds of winning the Nobel. We provide the first statistical evidence 
that John Bates Clark medalists and individuals affiliated with the University of Chicago have a higher chance of 
winning the Prize.
We would like to thank an anonymous referee, Steven Levitt, Lawrence White, Francis Lui and participants of the WEA 2008 Hawaii annual 
conference for helpful comments. We would also like to thank Edmond Cheng for the collection of data. All errors are ours. Corresponding 
Author: Terence Tai-Leung Chong, Department of Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong. Homepage: 
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eco/staff/tlchong/tlchong3.htm. Email: chong2064@cuhk.edu.hk. 
Citation: Terence tai-leung Chong and Cally Choi and Benjamin Everard, (2009) ''Who will win the Nobel Prize?'', Economics Bulletin, Vol. 
29 no.2 pp. 1107-1116. 
Submitted: May 04 2009.   Published: May 22, 2009. 
 
       2
1. Introduction 
 
 
The study of the economics profession has been of increasing interest since the 1990s. 
Garfield (1992) investigates the relationship between citations and the Nobel Prize. 
Van Dalen (1999) finds that the most important and creative contributions of the 
economics laureates are written between the ages of 29 and 38, which are slightly 
below that of laureates in physics but much younger than that of laureates in chemistry 
and medicine/biology. Coupé (2003) provides a list of top 100 economists worldwide. 
It is found that most of the top 100 are affiliated with Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Penn, 
Stanford, Berkeley and Northwestern. Only 14 are affiliated with non-US institutions. 
Hamermesh and Schmidt (2003) examine the determinants of election as fellow of the 
Econometric Society via a probit model. 
 
 
In this paper, we estimate a logit model to identify the determinants of the Nobel Prize 
award. The logit model is used because of its mathematical convenience.
2 The analysis 
is analogous in spirit to Hamermesh and Schmidt (2003) on the election of Econometric 
Society fellows. Similar to the election of fellows of the Econometric Society, the 
selecting process of Nobel laureates is also a Hall-of-Fame voting. The Bank of Sweden 
Prize for Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was established in 1968 by 
the Bank of Sweden. The award is given based on the originality of the contribution, its 
practical importance, its ability to withstand scrutiny and criticism, as well as its impact 
on future scholarly publications (Lindbeck, 2001). As of 2007, sixty-one economists 
have received the Prize.  
 
The distribution of nationalities of the laureates is uneven. Over two-third of the 
laureates are American, 25% are European economists. Only two Asian economists 
have been awarded the Prize. Such a distribution can be attributed to the fact that 74% 
of the doctorate recipients in Economics and Econometrics in the 1960s are U.S. 
citizens (Scott and Siegfried, 2002). The American dominance has lessened in recent 
years. In the year 2000, the percentage drops to about 42%. The distribution of 
affiliations of the laureates is also uneven. Table 1 shows the distribution of schools 
where the laureates obtained their most advanced degree and Table 2 lists the 
institutions where these laureates have spent most of their time. The University of 
Chicago has been a breeding ground for Nobel Prize winners. A large percentage of the 
laureates receive their PhD degrees from or spend most of their academic life at the 
University of Chicago. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the data 
and the methodology used. Section 3 predicts the future winners of the Nobel Prize. 
Section 4 is the conclusion.  
                                                 
2 The main motivation for logit regression was that the logistic distribution function can be computed 
faster than the normal distribution function. With the advent of modern computers, this distinction has 
become less important.     3
 
Table 1: Universities where laureates received their highest degrees (1969-2003) 
 
School  No. of laureates %  
Chicago 8  13.8% 
MIT 6  10.3% 
Harvard 5  8.6% 
Columbia 4  6.9% 
Oxford 3  5.2% 
Oslo   2  3.4% 
Leiden 2  3.4% 
Leningrad 2  3.4% 
Stockholm 2  3.4% 
LSE 2  3.4% 
John Hopkins  2  3.4% 
UC Berkeley  2  3.4% 
Princeton 2  3.4% 
Cambridge 2  3.4% 
Carnegie Mellon  2  3.4% 
Yale 1  1.7% 
Vienna 1  1.7% 
Wisconsin 1  1.7% 
Budapest 1  1.7% 
Paris 1  1.7% 
New School for Social Research  1  1.7% 
Ecole Polytechnique  1  1.7% 
UCLA 1  1.7% 
Minnesota 1  1.7% 
Cornell 1  1.7% 
Nottingham 1  1.7% 
Frankfurt 1  1.7% 
Total 58  100% 
   4
Table 2: Schools where the laureates have spent most of their time at (1969-2003) 
 
School  No. of laureates  % 
Chicago 10  17.2% 
MIT 6  10.3% 
UC Berkeley  5  8.6% 
Harvard 5  8.6% 
Columbia 4  6.9% 
UCSD 2  3.4% 
Oslo 2  3.4% 
Stockholm 2  3.4% 
LSE 2  3.4% 
Cambridge 2  3.4% 
Oxford 2  3.4% 
Stanford 2  3.4% 
Yale 2  3.4% 
Carnegie-Mellon 2  3.4% 
University of Bielefeld  1  1.7% 
Leningrad 1  1.7% 
University of Arizona  1  1.7% 
University of Washington  1  1.7% 
UBC 1  1.7% 
U Penn  1  1.7% 
Princeton 1  1.7% 
U of Jerusalem  1  1.7% 
The Netherlands School of Economics  1  1.7% 
University of Minnesota  1  1.7% 
Total 58  100% 
   5
2. The Data and Model  
 
Our sample is based on the 300 most commonly cited researchers in the field of 
Economists/Business from the ISI Highly Cited.com. Among these 300 individuals, 
non-economists and those who are deceased are removed from the sample. Nobel 
laureates and John Bates Clarke medalists
3 who are not included among the 300 are 
added to the list. The final sample contains 237 individuals. The variables of interest 
include the number of citations of the economists
4, their nationality, the school where 
they earn their PhD degrees, their current affiliation, age, gender and whether they have 
received the John Bates Clark Medal. The following logit regression model is 
estimated: 
 
 
P= 1/(1+ exp(-X’ ß)) ,                                                                          (1) 
 
where 
 
X’ ß = ß0 + ß1 CITATION + ß2 N500 + ß3 N1000 + ß4 GENDER + ß5 AGE 
 + ß6 CHICAGO_WORK + ß7 CHICAGO_PHD + ß8 JBC + ß9 AMERICAN; 
 
 
P is the probability that an individual is awarded the Nobel Prize; 
 
CITATION: the number of citations of the individual between 1981 and 2004;
5  
 
N500 = 1 if the individual has a single paper with more than 500 citations, and = 0 
otherwise; 
 
N1000 = 1 if the individual has a single paper with more than 1000 citations, and = 0 
otherwise; 
 
GENDER = 1 if the individual is a female, and = 0 otherwise; 
 
AGE: the current age of the non-winner or the age of the laureate at the time of the 
award; 
 
CHICAGO_WORK = 1 if the individual works for the University of Chicago longer than 
any other schools, and = 0 otherwise; 
 
CHICAGO_PHD = 1 if the individual is a PhD of the University of Chicago, and = 0 
otherwise; 
 
JBC = 1 if the individual has won the John Bates Clark Medal, and = 0 otherwise;
6  
                                                 
3 The John Bates Clark Medal Award was instituted in 1947 by the American Economic Association and 
is awarded every two years to a promising economist under the age of forty who has made a significant 
contribution to economic science.  
4 The number of citations can be obtained from http://www.isihighlycited.com. 
5 For coauthored papers, we divide the number of these citations equally among all the authors. 
6 The John Bates Clark Medal Award is only for young American economists, other important awards, 
such as the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics awarded by Northwestern University, the Yrjö 
Jahnsson Prize awarded by the European Economic Association, the Royal Economics Society Prize, and 
the Frisch Medal Award given by the Econometric Society should also be considered. However, these   6
 
AMERICAN = 1 if the individual is an American, and = 0 otherwise. 
 
 
Table 3: Estimation Results 
 
  Coefficient 
(t-statistic) 
  Model 1  Model 2  Model 3 
CONSTANT  -9.67 -9.61  -9.50 
  (-6.37) (-6.37)  (-6.42) 
CITATION  9.32E-05 0.0001  0.0002 
  (1.07)  (1.50)  (2.54)* 
N500  0.48 0.50   
  (0.97) (1.04)   
N1000  0.22    
  (0.36)    
GENDER  -34.38    
  (-7.65E-07)    
AGE  0.13 0.13  0.13 
  (5.57)* (5.54)*  (5.57)* 
CHICAGO_WORK  0.79 0.92  0.84 
  (1.28) (1.55)  (1.43) 
CHICAGO_PHD  0.51    
  (0.76)    
JBC  1.35 1.24  1.20 
  (2.29)** (2.18)**    (2.09)** 
AMERICAN  -1.08 -1.03  -1.02 
  (-2.44)*  (-2.38)**    (-2.37)** 
      
** significant at the 5% level       
* significant at the 1% level       
 
 
The results are reported in Table 3. For the first model, both the variables GENDER and 
CHICAGO_PHD are insignificant, and they are dropped in Model 2. Since N500 and 
N1000 are highly correlated, we remove N1000 from the model. The result is more 
satisfactory in the second model. Since N500 is still not significant, it is dropped in the 
third model. Note from Model 3 that age and the number of citations are the most 
significant factors. The average age of the laureates upon receiving the award is 66.7. 
As it takes time for an economic theory to be scrutinized empirically, AGE should be 
                                                                                                                                            
Prizes (established in 1994, 1993, 1988 and 1978 respectively) have a rather short history compared to 
the John Bates Clark Medal and the correlation between these awards and the Nobel Prize is subject to 
further observation. Thus, they are not included in our model. 
   7
positively related to the chance of being awarded the Prize. Our calculations show that 
the winning chance increases by 2.29% as AGE increases by one year, and by 2.85% 
for every 1000 additional citations.  
 
 
Table 4: The relationship between awardees of the John Bates Clark Medal and the 
Nobel Prize 
 
John Bates Clark Medal  Awardees Nobel  Lag time (years) 
1947 Paul  Samuelson  1970  23 
1949 Kenneth  Boulding  Deceased Deceased 
1951 Milton  Friedman  1976  25 
1953  Not Awarded     
1955 James  Tobin  1981  26 
1957 Kenneth  Arrow  1972  15 
1959 Lawrence  Klein  1980  21 
1961 Robert  Solow  1987  26 
1963 Hendrik  Houthakker     
1965 Zvi  Griliches  Deceased Deceased 
1967 Gary  Becker  1992  25 
1969 Marc  Nerlove     
1971 Dale  Jorgenson     
1973 Franklin  Fisher     
1975 Daniel  McFadden  2000  25 
1977 Martin  Feldstein     
1979 Joseph  Stiglitz  2001  22 
1981 Michael  Spence  2001  20 
1983 James  Heckman  2000  17 
1985 Jerry  Hausman     
1987 Sanford  Grossman     
1989 David  Kreps     
1991  Paul Krugman   2008  17 
1993 Lawrence  Summers     
1995 David  Card     
1997 Kevin  Murphy     
1999 Andrei  Shleifer     
2001  Matthew Rabin      
2003 Steven  Levitt    
2005 Daron  Acemoglu    
2007 Susan  Athey    
2009 Emmanuel  Saez    
   8
We observe a strong relationship between the awarding of the John Bates Clark Medal 
and the awarding of the Nobel Prize. Table 4 shows the awardees of the John Bates 
Clark Medal and the Nobel Prize. The correlation is obvious. From 1947-1991, 12 out 
of 22 medalists have already received the Nobel Prize. The average lag between 
receiving these two awards is 21.8 years. Our estimation result shows that John Bates 
Clark medalists are 19.57% more likely to win the Nobel Prize than non-medalists.  
 
As our sample of highly cited economists consists mostly of American, the relative 
proportion of winning the Prize is smaller for American in our sample. Note that the 
coefficient of the gender variable is not significant. Thus far, all the Economics 
laureates are male. There is one female (Karen Lewis) among the top 100 in Coupé 
(2003). In our sample, there are only two female economists (Nancy Stokey and 
Barbara Spencer) and there is only one female recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal 
(Susan Athey)
7. Under our model, Barbara Spencer and Nancy Stokey have a chance of 
13.9% and 7.4% of winning the Nobel Prize respectively. Due to the lack of female 
laureates, we cannot conclude that gender is related to the odds of receiving the award. 
The University of Chicago is shown to be a breeding ground for Nobel laureates. As of 
2008, 22 out of 62 recipients of the Prize are affiliated with this school. Under our 
model, economists who spend most of their career at the University of Chicago have an 
additional chance of 12.5% of winning the Nobel.  
 
 
3. Prediction 
 
To test the explanatory power of our model, we construct a prediction table with a 
cutoff probability of 0.5. Table 5 shows that among the 184 economists who have not 
yet been awarded the Nobel Prize, our model correctly predicts that 93% of them 
having a chance lower than 0.5 of winning the Prize. Among those who have been 
awarded the Prize (53 economists), 24 of them have a chance higher than 0.5 for being 
awarded the Prize. 
 
 
 
Table 5: Prediction Evaluation (success cutoff C = 0.5) 
      Estimated Equation 
 Dep=0  Dep=1  Total 
P(Dep=1)<=C  172   29   201 
P(Dep=1)>C   12   24   36 
Total   184   53   237 
Correct   172   24   196 
% Correct   93   45   83 
% Incorrect   7.1   54.7   17.7 
 
 
                                                 
7 The asymmetry can be explained by the demographic profile of doctorate recipients reported in Scott 
and Siegfried (2002). In the 1960s, only 4.5% of the PhD recipients in Economics and Econometrics 
were women. There were only about 260 female PhD recipients in the whole decade. In the 1970s, the 
ratio increased to 8.7% and continued to increase over time. In 2000, the percentage of female PhD 
recipients was 26.9%.  
   9
The chance of winning the Nobel Prize can be computed by our model. For the 184 
economists in the pool who have not yet been awarded with the Nobel Prize, 12 of them 
have a winning probability higher than 0.5. The winning probabilities of these 12 
economists are reported in Table 6. 
 
 
Table 6: Economists who have a high chance of winning the Nobel Prize 
Name Winning  Probability 
Hendrik Houthakker  0.94 
William Baumol   0.86 
Martin Feldstein
**   0.85 
Edmond Malinvaud   0.84 
Eugene Fama
**   0.84 
Thomas Schelling*  0.80 
Oliver Williamson  0.73 
Dale Jorgenson
**   0.71 
Harold Demsetz
**  0.69 
Marc Nerlove  0.66 
Fisher Franklin   0.59 
Jerry Hausman   0.58 
 
*Thomas Schelling was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005. 
**Martin Feldstein, Eugene Fama, Dale Jorgenson and Harold Demsetz are also listed in Thomson Nobel 
Prize predictions (http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/nobel/nominees/#economics). Other economists 
in the Thomson’s list include Lars Hansen, Thomas Sargent, Christopher Sims, Armen Alchian, Robert 
Barro, Kenneth French, Paul Romer, Richard Thaler, Jagdish Bhagwati, Avinash Dixit, Paul Krugman, 
Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmstrom, Oliver Williamson, Elhanan Helpman, Gene Grossman, Jean Tirole, 
Robert Wilson and Paul Milgrom.  
 
 
 
4. Conclusion 
 
In this paper, we estimate a logit model to identify the common features of Nobel 
laureates. Factors that are found to be significant include the number of citations, age, 
the nationality and the affiliation of an economist, and whether he/she has been 
awarded the John Bates Clark Medal. We provide statistical evidence that the Chicago 
school economists have a better chance of winning the Nobel Prize. We also identify a 
handful of economists who are likely to be awarded the Prize. As recent laureates 
received their PhD in the 1960s, American males will still dominate the award in the 
coming decade. However, with the increase in the number of female doctorate 
recipients, it is likely that there will be a first female laureate within 20 years.  
 
 
 
 
References 
 
 
Coupé, T. (2003) “Revealed Performances: Worldwide Rankings of Economists and   10
Economics Departments, 1999-2000” Journal of the European Economic Association 1, 
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Garfield, E. (1992) “Of Nobel Class: Part 1. An Overview of ISI Studies on Highly 
Cited Authors and Nobel Laureates” Institute for scientific information. 
 
Hamermesh, D. S. and P. Schmidt (2003) “The Determinants of Econometric Society 
Fellows Elections” Econometrica 71, 399-407. 
 
Lindbeck, A. (1999) “The Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) Prize in Economic 
Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1969-2006” The Nobel Prize: The First 100 Years, 
Imperial College Press and World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., available from 
http://www.nobel.se/economics/articles/lindbeck/index.html. 
 
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Proceedings 92, 527-530.  
 
van Dalen, H. P., (1999) “The Golden Age of Nobel Economists” The American 
Economist  43, 17-35. 

American Economic Association Universal Academic Questionnaire Summary Statistics” American Economic Review Papers and

Of Nobel Class: Part 1. An Overview of ISI Studies on Highly Cited Authors and Nobel Laureates” Institute for scientific information.

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The Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) Prize

Who will win the Nobel Prize?

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Who will win the Nobel Prize?

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