The Nobel committee continues to favour economists who place inequality, limiting corporate power, executive excess and the plutocracy and market design at the heart of their research.Click here, here and here for the winners of the previous three years.
"A British-born Princeton professor, Angus Deaton, has won the Nobel prize in economics for his work charting global developments in health, wellbeing and inequality.
The Nobel Committee said the economist’s work had a major influence, particularly in public policy where it has helped governments determine how different social groups react to specific tax changes.
“To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said, announcing the 8m Swedish krona (£637,165) prize.
“By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.”
His work complements studies by Thomas Piketty and Sir Tony Atkinson, who was also in the running for the prize, that focus on wealth and income inequality, by examining patterns of consumer spending to illustrate growing inequality in health and wellbeing..
He is perhaps best known for the Deaton Paradox – that sharp shocks to income do not appear to cause equally large shocks to consumption."