Columbia Nobel Prize Winner Michael Woodford’s First To-Do? Give an Economics Exam
In true professorial fashion, after winning a Nobel, Woodford headed straight to Uris Hall to administer a test in his Cognitive Mechanisms and Economic Behavior course, to cheers and applause from his students.
It was already going to be a busy day when Michael Woodford, John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University, received a call from Stockholm informing him that he had won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2026.
“You know, I’m giving an exam this morning,” he told Adam Smith (no economic relation), of the Nobel Prize website.
Interviewer Adam Smith: So how do you foresee the day panning out now?
Michael Woodford: “... I have to go pick up my exam papers and booklets that the students will have to write the exam in. And I have to get over to do that. And I have several visitors I have to see. There is a visitor from the UK that I’m supposed to see today, and we have a job candidate I’m in charge of recruiting in my department. Today is a very busy day. It was supposed to be a busy day already, so we’ll see what happens to it.”
Interviewer Adam Smith: I love the fact that the plan is unaltered by all this news. I wonder if your students in the exam will be able to concentrate quite as hard as they would have before.
Michael Woodford: They’re probably hoping I’ll cancel the exam. I don’t know if I should.
Interviewer Adam Smith: Well, it doesn’t sound like you’re going to, and I guess that’s part of the recipe for success—you just keep going.
Give the exam he did at 10:10 a.m. in Uris Hall, after a round of celebratory applause and cheers from the students in his Cognitive Mechanisms and Economic Behavior course.
“It’s just a staggering piece of news,” Woodford said of the achievement.
The celebrations continue with a toast and reception for Woodford this afternoon.
Learn more about Woodford’s work on the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization here; he is the 16th Columbian to receive this prize in economics, and the University’s 89th Nobel laureate.