Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics Monday for her contribution to advancing the understanding of women in the labor market

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Goldin had "provided the first comprehensive account of women's earnings and labor market participation through the centuries."

The economics prize is officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Unlike the prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace, it was not instituted by the Swedish industrialist but by Sweden's central bank in 1968.

The prize went last year to former US Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke and two fellow American economists, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their work in the early 1980s providing the foundation for the modern understanding of why banks are needed, their chief vulnerabilities and how their collapse can fuel financial meltdowns.