Stockholm (AFP)

The 2019 Nobel Laureates have rewarded only one woman - the Polish Olga Tokarczuk in literature for the 2018 edition postponed by one year - before the announcement of the last prize of the season Monday, that of economy, which, at with one exception, distinguished only men in half a century of existence.

The latest winner of the Nobel Prize, the economics prize, officially "the price of the Bank of Sweden in economics in memory of Alfred Nobel", created in 1968 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Bank of Sweden, will be unveiled at 09:45 GMT in Stockholm.

The economy is perhaps the Nobel where the profile of the winner is the easiest to guess: a man over 55, white, American. In the past 20 years, three-quarters of them fit this description.

Neither of the other Nobel Committees filters the choice of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards it before its public announcement, and it is in the press or the university halls that the names of possible laureates must be sought. this fiftieth edition.

The American-Israeli Joshua Angrist, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, specializing in the economics of education and work, holds this year the rope to win the award, according to analysts.

Israeli Elanan Helpman, a professor at Harvard, and the American Gene Grossman, a professor at Princeton, are also among the favorites, according to Hubert Fromlet, an economist at Linné University in Sweden, interviewed by the TT news agency. Both worked in the field of growth and trade.

Jagdish Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University in New York and author of research on trade theory that is a reference, is also quoted.

Born in India in 1934, he played "a crucial, albeit subtle, role in preventing protectionism from gaining its nobility," according to one of his former students, Paul Krugman, who was awarded in 2008, summing up the the Nobel Prize for Economics to the theoreticians of the market economy and free trade.

- Second decorated woman? -

Micael Dahlén, professor of economics interviewed by AFP, advances a trio of women: Americans Anne Krueger, for her research on international trade, and Carmen Reinhart, who works on public debts and growth, and the French Esther Duflo, specialized in development economics.

According to him, at least one of them could become the second woman to get the Nobel Prize in economics, after the American Elinor Ostrom in 2009.

Although it is the most prestigious award for a researcher in economics, the award has not earned the same status as the disciplines chosen by Alfred Nobel (medicine, physics, chemistry, peace and literature).

Discipline controversial, eminently political for some, the economy is distinguished from the natural sciences in the spotlight the week before.

The prize went in 2018 to the Americans William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, former chief economist of the World Bank, who described the virtues and nuisances of economic activity on the climate.

- Last price of the season -

The economy will close a Nobel season marked by the attribution of the prize of literature to the Polish Olga Tokarczuk for the edition 2018, postponed of one year after a scandal of sexual assault, and for 2019 to the Austrian Peter Handke , a world-renowned writer whose pro-Serb positions during the war in former Yugoslavia sparked violent controversy.

On Friday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the architect of a spectacular reconciliation with the Eritrean ex-brother and father of reforms that could profoundly transform a country long given to authoritarianism, was awarded the Nobel Prize of the peace.

Each Nobel consists of a gold medal, a diploma and a check of nine million Swedish kronor (about 830,000 euros).

The price has lost the equivalent of 100,000 euros for two years, because of a depreciation of the crown against the euro.

© 2019 AFP