Three Americans win the Nobel Prize in economics

From top, Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Three Americans won the Nobel Prize for economics Wednesday for research into how the control of information influences everything from used car sales to the boom in high-tech stocks during the 1990s.

George A. Akerlof, 61, of the University of California at Berkeley; A. Michael Spence, 58, of Stanford University; and Joseph E. Stiglitz, 58, of Columbia University will share the $943,000 award.

The laureates laid the foundation in the 1970s for a general theory about how players with differing amounts of information affect a wide range of markets.

Research into "asymmetric information" gave economists a way to measure the risks, for example, faced by a lender who lacked information about a borrower's creditworthiness.

It also explored how people with inside knowledge of a high-technology company's financial prospects gain an edge over other investors, while people who don't fully understand a company's finances may invest unwisely.

The theory helps economists explain why the recent bubble in high-technology stocks burst.

The winners' contributions "form the core of modern information economics," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a written announcement.

A century of winners Click here for a list of Nobel Prize winners in economics

The award, known formally as the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Sciences, was the second prize announced Wednesday.

Two Americans and a Japanese scientist shared the chemistry prize in the morning for showing how to better control chemical reactions, leading to medicines including a treatment for Parkinson's disease.

William S. Knowles, 84, of St. Louis, and Ryoji Noyori, 63, of Nagoya University in Japan shared half the award. K. Barry Sharpless, 60, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., won the other half.

The prestigious prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, and were first awarded in 1901.

The economics prize was established separately in 1968 by the Swedish central bank, but it is grouped with the other awards.

The physics winner was announced on Tuesday, following Monday's awarding of the medicine prize. The literature prize will be announced on Thursday and the peace prize on Friday in Oslo, Norway.

The prizes are always presented to the winners on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the prizes, all living laureates have been invited to the ceremonies this year, with some 150 expected in Stockholm and 30 in Oslo.

Last year's economics prize was won by Americans James J. Heckman and Daniel L. McFadden for their work in developing theories to help analyze labor data and how people make work and travel decisions.

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• University of California at Berkeley
• Stanford University
• Columbia University