Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
The first prize in economics was awarded in 1969 to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes". In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman awarded the prize.
MIT Department of Economics
Undergraduate studies in economics were introduced in the 19th century by institute president Francis Amasa Walker, while the department's Ph.D. program was introduced in 1941. It is one of the "big five" schools in the field along with the faculties at the University of Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford (these schools have consistently ranked as the top five schools in the country since graduate school rankings have been produced by "U.S. News & World Report"). The American Economics Association estimates that MIT and these peers produce half of all tenure track professors at U.S. research universities. Half of all John Bates Clark Medal recipients since 1999 were Ph.D. students at MIT, while the department has the second highest number of Nobel Prize winning students and faculty in economics in the world after the University of Chicago. Among the department's past and current faculty and alumni are several recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics: