| Year | Winner | Achievement |
| 2008 | Leonid Hurwicz,
Eric S. Maskin, and
Roger B. Myerson | "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory" |
| 2006 | Edmund S. Phelps | "for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy" |
| 2005 | Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling | "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis" |
| 2004 | Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott | "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles" |
| 2003 | Robert F. Engle III | "for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH)" |
| 2003 | Clive W.J. Granger | "for methods of analyzing economic time series with common trends (cointegration)" |
| 2002 | Daniel Kahneman | "for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty" |
| 2002 | Vernon L. Smith | "for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms" |
| 2001 | George A. Akerlof,
A. Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz | "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information" |
| 2000 | James J. Heckman | "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples" |
| 2000 | Daniel L. McFadden | "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice" |
| 1999 | Robert A. Mundell | "for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas" |
| 1998 | Amartya Sen | "for his contributions to welfare economics" |
| 1997 | Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes | "for a new method to determine the value of derivatives" |
| 1996 | James A. Mirrlees and William Vickrey | "for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information" |
| 1995 | Robert E. Lucas Jr. | "for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy" |
| 1994 | John C. Harsanyi,
John F. Nash Jr., and Reinhard Selten | "for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games" |
| 1993 | Robert W. Fogel and
Douglass C. North | "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change" |
| 1992 | Gary S. Becker | "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour" |
| 1991 | Ronald H. Coase | "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy" |
| 1990 | Harry M. Markowitz, Merton H. Miller, and William F. Sharpe | "for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics" |
| 1989 | Trygve Haavelmo | "for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures" |
| 1988 | Maurice Allais | "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources" |
| 1987 | Robert M. Solow | "for his contributions to the theory of economic growth" |
| 1986 | James M. Buchanan Jr. | "for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making" |
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| 1985 | Franco Modigliani | "for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets" |
| 1984 | Richard Stone | "for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis" |
| 1983 | Gerard Debreu | "for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic theory and for his rigorous reformulation of the theory of general equilibrium" |
| 1982 | George J. Stigler | "for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation" |
| 1981 | James Tobin | "for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices" |
| 1980 | Lawrence R. Klein | "for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies" |
| 1980 | | |
| 1979 | Theodore W. Schultz and Sir Arthur Lewis | "for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries" |
| 1978 | Herbert A. Simon | "for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations" |
| 1977 | Bertil Ohlin and
James E. Meade | "for their pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements" |
| 1976 | Milton Friedman | "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy" |
| 1975 | Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich and
Tjalling C. Koopmans | "for their contributions to the theory of optimum allocation of resources" |
| 1974 | Gunnar Myrdal and
Friedrich August von Hayek | "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena" |
| 1973 | Wassily Leontief | "for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems" |
| 1972 | John R. Hicks and
Kenneth J. Arrow | "for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory" |
| 1971 | Simon Kuznets | "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development" |
| 1970 | Paul A. Samuelson | "for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science" |
| 1969 | Ragnar Frisch and
Jan Tinbergen | "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes" |
