CRI听力:American British Deaton Wins 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Goran Hansson, Permanent Secretary for the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences made the announcement.

"The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2015 to Angus Deaton, Princeton University, NJ, USA "for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare."

Understanding how consumers distribute their spending among different goods is necessary for forecasting actual consumption patterns, and also crucial in evaluating how policy reforms, like changes in consumption taxes, affect the welfare of different groups.

Peter Englund, Member of the Riksbank Prize Committee for Economic Sciences and Professor at the Swedish Royal Economic School said Deaton was awarded for his three analyses related to different aspects of consumption.

"The first one is what we call demand systems, demands and consumption for different goods, depends not only on people's income, but price of particular goods, and also the price of other goods, demands for different goods are interrelated, hence demand systems."

Deaton's approach and its later modifications are now standard tools, both in academia and in practical policy evaluation.

Englund said to design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, one must first understand individual consumption choices.

The second question Deaton dealt with is how much of society's income is spent and how much is saved.

Deaton also answered the question how to best measure and analyze welfare and poverty.

Deaton's focus on household surveys has helped transform development economics from a theoretical field based on aggregate data to an empirical field based on detailed individual data.

Deaton was born in Edingburgh in 1945 and became professor in Princeton University in 1983.

He will receive his prize in Stockholm on December 10 together with other Nobel Laureates in Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Literature.

For CRI, this is Chen Xuefei reporting from Stockholm.