2 Americans, 1 British-Cypriot win econ Nobel

[October 11, 2010]  STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Americans Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides, a British and Cypriot citizen, won the 2010 Nobel economics prize Monday for developing theories that help explain how economic policies can affect unemployment.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says they won the prestigious award "for their analysis of markets with search frictions."

Among other things, their research shows why a lot of people remain unemployed even at times when there are large number of job openings.

"The laureates' models help us understand the ways in which unemployment, job vacancies and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy," the citation said.

Diamond, 70, is an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an authority on Social Security, pensions and taxation.

President Barack Obama has nominated Diamond to become a member of the Federal Reserve. However, the Senate failed to approve his nomination before lawmakers left to campaign for the midterm congressional elections.

Mortensen, 71, is an economics professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Pissarides, 62, is a professor at the London School of Economics.

The 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.5 million) prize is not among the original awards established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his 1895 will, but was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in his memory.

The economics jury was the last of the Nobel committees to announce 2010 winners.

Last week, British professor Robert Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his fertility research that led to the first test-tube baby. Russian-born scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the physics prize for groundbreaking experiments with graphene, the strongest and thinnest material known to mankind.

The chemistry award went to Heck and Japanese researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for designing techniques to bind together carbon atoms.

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa won the literature prize and the imprisoned Chinese democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The awards are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

[Associated Press; By LOUISE NORDSTROM and KARL RITTER]

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