Ben S. Bernanke ’75 Shares Economics Nobel

Three scholars honored for work on banking and financial crises.

Ben S. Bernanke

Ben S. Bernanke

Photograph in the public domain

Ben S. Bernanke ’75, former chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, today shared the Nobel Prize in economics with two other scholars of banking and financial crises. The honor—formally, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022—was conferred on Bernanke, who is now at the Brookings Institution; Douglas W. Diamond, of the University of Chicago; and Philip H. Dybvig, of Washington University, St. Louis. According to the news announcement, their scholarship has “significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises. An important finding in their research is why avoiding bank collapses is vital.”

As The New York Times reported, Bernanke’s research informed his leadership of the Federal Reserve Board during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Having beeen appointed chair in 2006, as the housing market began to collapse and “overextended borrowers fell behind and defaulted on their mortgages, and a pile of risky mortgage debt that had been sliced, diced and parceled out across big banks and the broader financial system began to drag down institutions and break the gears of finance,” Bernanke and the Fed faced a potentially severe depression.

Bernanke, the newspaper continued, “who received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who taught at Princeton University before coming to the Fed as a governor in 2002, drew upon his research about the Great Depression to try to stem the fallout. He worked with colleagues to set up emergency programs that backstopped various markets on the brink of collapse, from short-term business debt to securitized loans. And alongside the Treasury Department, he used the Fed’s powers to enable bailouts for bank and insurance company portfolios.”

Bernanke has been a frequent guest on campus in recent years. In 2008, while he was Fed chair, he delivered the Class Day speech, available here. Recalling the speaker in at his own Commencement in 1975, social critic and comedian Dick Gregory, Bernanke said his predecessor “was inclined toward the sharp-edged and satiric. Central bankers don’t do satire as a rule, so I am going to have to strive for ‘kind of interesting.’”

He is the second College graduate to share a Nobel Prize this year. Carolyn R. Bertozzi ’88 shared the prize in chemistry with two other scientists. 

 

Read more articles by John S. Rosenberg
Related topics

You might also like

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Zeroes In on the Classroom Experience

Class schedules and academics are at the top of the agenda for Harvard faculty.

Harvard Football: Harvard 59, Holy Cross 24

Another week, another blowout, this one against an in-state rival

Trump Says a Deal with Harvard Is Close

Administration squeezes Harvard finances, and a federal judge blasts deportation efforts as unconstitutional.

Most popular

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

Three Harvardians Win Macarthur Fellowships

A mathematician, a political scientist, and an astrophysicist are honored with “genius” grants for their work.

This Harvard Scientist Is Changing the Future of Genetic Diseases

David Liu has pioneered breakthroughs in gene editing, creating new therapies that may lead to cures.

Explore More From Current Issue

Vivian W. Rong sitting on bench outdoors.

Highlighting Harvard Magazine’s Fellows

The 2025-2026 Ledecky and Summer Undergraduate Fellows

Two women in traditional kimonos, one lighting a cigarette, in a scene from Apart from You.

Harvard Film Archive Spotlights Japanese Director Mikio Naruse

A retrospective of the filmmaker’s works, from Floating Clouds to Flowing

Catherine Zipf smiling, wearing striped shirt and dark sweater outdoors.

Preserving the History of Jim Crow Era Safe Havens

Architectural historian Catherine Zipf is building a database of Green Book sites.