The first Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded in 1969.
The award was established by Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, in connection with its 300th anniversary. Unlike the original Nobel Prizes, it was not created in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will, which is why its formal name differs from the commonly used “Nobel Prize in Economics.”
The inaugural laureates were Ragnar Frisch of Norway and Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands. They were recognized for developing and applying dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. The prize has been awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences alongside the Nobel Prizes since then.
A common mix-up is to call 1969 the year the economics prize was added to Nobel’s original awards. More precisely, it was created later by Sveriges Riksbank and first presented in 1969.