Scottish economist Angus Deaton wins Nobel prize in Economics

STOCKHOLM: Scottish economist Angus Deaton has won the Nobel memorial prize in economic sciences for “his analysis of consumption, poverty and welfare,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday.

Deaton, who was born in Edinburgh in 1945, now works at Princeton University in the United States.

The academy said the work for which Deaton is now being honoured revolves around three central questions: How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods; how much of society’s income is spent and how much is saved; and how do we best measure and analyse welfare and poverty?

“To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices,” the academy said.

“More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.”

Last year, French economist Jean Tirole won the 8 million Swedish kronor (about $975,000) award for his research on market power and regulation.

The economics award is not a Nobel Prize in the same sense as the others, which were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in 1895. Sweden’s central bank added the economics prize in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel.