www.fbbva.es
DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION
AND INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS
PRESS RELEASE
Angus Deaton, 2011 BBVA
Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge
laureate wins the 2015 Nobel Prize
Madrid, October 13, 2015.-Angus Stewart Deaton (United Kingdom, 1945),
professor at Princeton University (USA) and 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of
Knowledge Laureate in Economics, Finance and Management has received
the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his analysis of “consumption,
poverty and welfare.”
Professor Deaton is the fifth winner of a BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge
Award who has gone on to win the Nobel Prize. Specifically, since the Frontiers
Awards were established in 2008, the following laureates have subsequently
been honored with a Nobel:
Robert J. Lefkowitz, 2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in
Biomedicine and 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Shinya Yamanaka, 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in
Biomedicine and 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine
Lars Peter Hansen, 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in
Economics, Finance and Management and 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics
Jean Tirole, 2008 Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics,
Finance and Management and 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics
Angus Stewart Deaton, 2011 Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in
Economics, Finance and Management and 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics.
It is in the economics category that the two award families have converged
most closely. Indeed this is the third year running that the Nobel economics
prize has gone to a previous winner of the Frontiers of Knowledge Award: Lars
Peter Hansen, Jean Tirole, Angus Deaton.
Angus Deaton, laureate in the 2011 Frontiers of Knowledge Awards
In 2011, Angus Deaton was granted the Frontiers of Knowledge Award for his
fundamental contributions to the theory of consumption, savings and the
measurement of economic wellbeing. The jury noted at the time that “his
research applies rigorous methods to important real-world issues. Throughout his
career, his work has been characterized by an attempt to understand
empirical evidence in terms of a clearly articulated theoretical structure and
attention to the behavior underlying the data.”
Among the merits singled out by the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge
jury in granting Angus Deaton the 2011 award was his contribution to economic
scholarship in incorporating consumption as a key measure of welfare and
poverty. In the words of its citation: “He has helped us to a better
understanding of the relationship between consumption and income, while
showing that there are parts of this relationship that do not work and need to
be reformulated.”
At the press conference preceding the award ceremony in Madrid, in June
2012, Deaton expressed concern that economic expansion in countries like
India or China was widening the gap between rich and poor, while insisting
that, despite this fact, their rate of growth was doing much to improve the lives
of the poorest people: “We must not yield to the temptation to proclaim from
the outside that their growth is bad because it only increases inequality, for that
is not the case.”
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards
The BBVA Foundation established its Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in 2008 to
recognize the authors of outstanding contributions and radical advances in a
broad range of scientific, technological and artistic areas congruent with the
knowledge map of the late 20th and 21st centuries, and others that address
central challenges, such as climate change and development cooperation,
deserving of greater visibility and recognition. Their eight categories include
classical areas like Basic Sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) and
Biomedicine, and other, more recent areas characteristic of our time, ranging
from Information and Communication Technologies, Ecology and Conservation
Biology, Climate Change and Economics, Finance and Management to
Development Cooperation and the innovative realm of artistic creation that is
Contemporary Music.
The juries in each category are made up of leading international experts in their
respective fields, who arrive at their decisions in a wholly independent manner,
applying internationally recognized metrics of excellence. The BBVA
Foundation is aided in the organization of the awards by the Spanish National
Research Council (CSIC), the country’s premier multidisciplinary research body.
Link to Spanish and English-language videos of Angus Deaton:
-
Video announcement of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge
Award winner in Spanish and English
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Video of press conference offered by Angus Deaton in the BBVA
Foundation on the occasion of the Frontiers of Knowledge award
ceremony, in Spanish and English
For more information, contact the BBVA Foundation Department of Communication
and Institutional Relations (+34 91 374 5210, 91 374 8173, 91 537
3769/comunicacion@fbbva.es) or visit www.fbbva.es