Lars Peter Hansen

Lars Peter Hansen is an internationally known leader in economic dynamics and recipient of the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He is known for making fundamental advances in our understanding of how economic agents cope with changing and risky environments. He has contributed to the development of statistical methods designed to explore the interconnections between macroeconomic indicators and assets in financial markets. Hansen is the leading expert in economic dynamics who works at the forefront of economic thinking and modeling, drawing approaches from macroeconomics, finance, and statistics. He has made fundamental advances in our understanding of how economic agents cope with changing and risky environments and uncertainty.

Hansen is the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor and the Director of BFI’s Macro Finance Research (MFR) Program at the University of Chicago. He was the inaugural director of the Becker Friedman Institute where he guided its scholarly direction and chaired the Institute Research Council until 2017. Read Hansen’s personal reflection on the beginnings of the Becker Friedman Institute here.

He won the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management “for making fundamental contributions to our understanding of how economic actors cope with risky and changing environments.” He also received the CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2008 and the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics from Northwestern University in 2006.