Northwestern professor wins Nobel Prize

	Dale Mortensen

Northwestern University was aglow with pride Oct. 11 when Dale T. Mortensen, the Ida C. Cook Professor of Economics, was announced a winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics.

But the news came as no surprise to Mortensen’s colleagues at the Kellogg School. In a poll of Northwestern and Kellogg faculty members just a week earlier, Mortensen was at the top of the list of the economists deemed likeliest to win the honor.

The Nobel Prize “was richly deserved,” said Kellogg’s Arvind Krishnamurthy, the Harold L. Stuart Professor of Finance. “It was only a matter of time before [Mortensen] got it.”

Mortensen shares the $1.5 million prize with Peter Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The three were recognized for their “analysis of markets with search frictions,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Their work helps explain the ways in which unemployment, job vacancies and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy.