2022 Nobel Prize Celebrates Banking Research

Former NBER research associate Ben Bernanke, current research associate Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dybvig have been awarded the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of their "research on banks and financial crises." In announcing the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained that "Modern banking research clarifies why we have banks, how to make them less vulnerable in crises, and how bank collapses exacerbate financial crises. [The laureates'] ... analyses have been of great practical importance in regulating financial markets and dealing with financial crises." 

Bernanke is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. He was affiliated with the NBER Economic Fluctuations and Growth and Monetary Economics programs for more than two decades, when he was a faculty member at Stanford and Princeton, and he directed the Monetary Economics program. Diamond is the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a research associate in the NBER Corporate Finance program. Dybvig is the Boatman's Bancshares Professor of Banking and Finance at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Academy released both a high-level summary of the laureates' contributions and a longer account of their work.

The laureates delivered their prize lectures on December 8, 2022.

• Ben S. Bernanke’s prize lecture: “Banking, Credit, and Economic Fluctuations”
• Douglas W. Diamond’s prize lecture: “Financial Intermediation and Financial Crises”
• Philip H. Dybvig’s prize lecture: “Multiple Equilibria”

Reports on the prize announcement and the economists’ work were featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

With this year’s awards, 37 current or past NBER research affiliates, and an additional seven current or past members of the NBER Board of Directors, have received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Affiliates previously awarded the prize are Joshua Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens, 2021; Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, 2019; William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, 2018; Richard Thaler, 2017; Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström, 2016; Angus Deaton, 2015; Lars Hansen and Robert Shiller, 2013; Alvin Roth, 2012; Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, 2011; Peter Diamond, 2010; Paul Krugman, 2008; Finn Kydland, 2004; Robert F. Engle, 2003; Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001; James J. Heckman and Daniel L. McFadden, 2000; Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes, 1997; Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 1995; and the late Dale Mortensen, 2010; Edward C. Prescott, 2004; Robert W. Fogel, 1993; Gary S. Becker, 1992; George J. Stigler, 1982; Theodore W. Schultz, 1979; Milton Friedman, 1976; and Simon Kuznets, 1971. In addition to this group, the seven current or past members of the NBER Board of Directors who have received the prize are: George Akerlof, 2001; Christopher Sims, 2011; Robert Solow, 1987; and the late William Vickrey, 1996; Douglass North, 1993; James Tobin, 1981; and Paul Samuelson, 1970.