Two economists known for their work on integrating expectations more sensibly into models of the economy have won the 2011 economics prize in memory of Alfred Nobel, in a bold decision that will be seen as honouring academics whose work many blame as partly responsible for the financial crisis.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize to professors Thomas Sargent, of New York University, and Christopher Sims, of Princeton University, for their independent “empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy”, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s.

The citation was specific in honouring the “empirical” or practical rather than theoretical work of both economists, since Prof Sargent is best known for his work on rational expectations theory, which underpinned the belief that financial markets work efficiently.