STOCKHOLM—The Nobel economics prize was awarded Monday to Harvard University professor Claudia Goldin for research that has advanced the understanding of the gender gap in the labor market.
She has studied 200 years of women’s participation in the workplace, showing that despite continued economic growth, women’s pay did not continuously catch up to men’s and a divide still exists despite women gaining higher levels of education than men.
Ms. Goldin had to become a data sleuth as she sought to fill in missing data for her research, economist Randi Hjalmarsson said. For parts of history, systematic labor market records did not exist, and, if they did, information about women was missing.
“So how did Claudia Goldin overcome this missing data challenge? She had to be a detective to dig through the archives to find novel data sources and creative ways to use them to measure these unknowns,” Ms. Hjalmarsson said.
Of receiving the Nobel, Ms. Goldin, 77, “was surprised and very, very glad,” Ellegren said.
Her award follows the awards in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, and peace that were announced last week.
The Economics Award was created in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank and is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Last year’s winners were former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip Dybvig for their research into bank failures that helped shape America’s aggressive response to the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
A week ago, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine. The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini, and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz.
U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Alexei Ekimov won the chemistry prize on Wednesday. They were followed by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who was awarded the prize for literature. And on Friday, jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi won the peace prize.
The prizes are handed out at awards ceremonies in December in Oslo and Stockholm. They carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma.
