Robert E. Hall (born 1943) is an American economist and professor of economics at Stanford University. [1][3] He won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics together with Michael Woodford, a professor at Columbia University. The laureates were announced on 12 October 2026 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the prize is awarded for research on the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation. [1] According to Novinky.cz, the prize is to be presented on 10 December in Stockholm. [2]
The Academy stated that Hall made a significant contribution to the theory of consumption smoothing with a 1978 article. In its view, the article showed that consumption changes in response to unexpected news, not to predictable changes in income. [1] E15 describes his contribution as meaning that people change their behaviour only after their expectations change, and economists therefore have to model expectations. [3] Hall's work was followed up by Woodford, who, according to the Academy, stood at the origin of the New Keynesian model used as a standard for analysing monetary and fiscal policy. [1]
In 2007 Hall published, with Charles Jones, the study The Value of Life and the Rise in Health Spending. According to the economist Alex Tabarrok, it implies that the growing share of health care in gross domestic product is an expected consequence of rising prosperity. [1]
Sources
- ČTK / České noviny — 12 October 2026
- Novinky.cz — 12 October 2026
- E15 — 12 October 2026