NEW YORK (PIX11) — A New York City college professor found out he was a recipient of the Nobel Prize on Monday morning.
Michael Woodford won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Woodward won the prize with Stanford Professor Robert E. Hall.
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Woodford received the news through a phone call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“It’s a tremendous honor. It’s a surprise. But I’m feeling very good about it,” said Woodford.
Together with Hall, Woodford won the award for “demonstrating that economic models could be reconstructed to revitalize stabilization policy, rather than basing the models on statistical links between macroeconomic variables such as inflation,” according to the Nobel Prize website.
The Academy further states that Woodford and Hall instead showed how economic models can be built on a microeconomic foundation, which creates an understanding of “how the total mass of individual households and businesses affects the economy through their actions.”
“I offer my deepest congratulations to Michael Woodford on this tremendous honor,” said Jennifer L. Mnookin, Columbia University President. “What a tribute to his groundbreaking work alongside Robert E. Hall that has fundamentally reshaped the theoretical foundations of stabilization policy and provided us with the tools to navigate economic upturns and downturns more effectively.”
Students in Woodford’s first class of the day greeted him with cheers before he went ahead to give them an exam that was already scheduled that day.
For Columbia University, Woodford is the 89th person to win a Nobel Prize.
Andrew Cruz is a digital content producer. A native New Yorker, he joined PIX11 in 2009 as a weather producer. More of his work can be found here.