George Stigler won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Economics for studying industrial structures and government regulation.
Stigler was honored for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets, and causes and effects of public regulation. He examined how firms behave in industries and how regulation can influence competition.
His work on regulatory capture argued that regulation may sometimes serve the interests of the regulated industry rather than the public. Businesses can have strong incentives to influence rules, while consumers may face weaker incentives to organize against them.
Stigler was born in 1911 and spent much of his career at the University of Chicago. He received the economics prize alone in 1982, and his research helped shape modern industrial organization and public-choice analysis.