Nobel season winds up with economics prize

STOCKHOLM: The 2007 Nobel prize season comes to a close on Monday with the announcement of the Economics Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.   

The winner of the prize is scheduled to be announced in Stockholm at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT). Americans have enjoyed an unbroken run of wins in the economics category since 2000.   

Last year, the honours went to Edmund S. Phelps for his analysis of long- and short-term trade-offs in macroeconomic policy.   

The world's leading betting and gaming company Ladbrokes has for days seen Swedish economics professor Lena Edlund as the most likely winner, before American Christopher Sims.   

If Edlund whose research mainly deals with the status of women was to be chosen, she would be the first women to be awarded the prestigious prize.   

In economic circles Jean Tirole of France, an expert on game theory, has also been cited repeatedly.   

The Economics Prize was created in 1968 by Sweden's central bank and first awarded the following year. All other Nobel prizes were first awarded in 1901.   

On Friday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to former US vice president Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".   

Laureates will receive a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million Swedish kronor (1.53 million dollars, 1.08 million euros) from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, to be shared between them in each category, on December 10.