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.
Globalization and Its Discontents
Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with George Akerlof and Michael Spence) for demonstrating how information affects markets. Without equal access to information between employer and employee, company and consumer, or (in the IMF's case) lender and debtor, there is no chance of "free" markets operating efficiently. (This explanation also owes much to the earlier Nobel work of Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu.)