On rare occasions, the Nobel Peace Prize has been given for work with direct and strong economic implications. For example, I think of the 2006 Prize given to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their work on microfinance loans to the poor, or the 1970 prize to Norman Borlaug for his research leading to the Green Revolution in agricultural productivity. However, I am unaware of any example of the Peace Prize being given to an economist for writing a book or article, so I am unsurprised by the decision not to award the prize to John Maynard Keynes for his 1919 book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which forecast that the harsh terms and punitive reparations placed on Germany after the end of what was then known as the Great War could easily lead to a second World War.
However, Lars Jonung has gone spelunking in the Nobel archives and discovered that “Keynes was nominated for the Peace Prize three years in a row, formally evaluated, and placed on the Committee’s shortlist.” Apparently the nomination originated with “by a group of German economics professors in Munich three years in a row, in 1922, 1923, and 1924.” Jonung tells the story in “Why Keynes did not win the Nobel Peace Prize for `The Economic Consequences of the Peace'” (CEPR.org, March 5, 2026).
Apparently, Keynes’ candidacy for the Peace Prize was taken seriously enough that for two years in a row “the Nobel Committee commissioned an advisory report. The task to serve as appraiser (konsulent) fell in September 1923 to Wilhelm Keilhau, a young economist at the University of Kristiania (now Oslo).”
Apparently, the 1923 report from Keilhau focused on The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and praised it heavily. But then Keynes published A Tract on on Monetary Reform in 1923, and so the 1924 report from Keilhau spent space arguing that Keynes was wrong to reject the gold standard. In addition, a dispute involving Keynes exploded out of the supposed secrecy of the Nobel Committee deliberations and into the newspapers.
Following Woodrow Wilson’s death in 1924, historian Jacob Worm Müller – a fellow adviser to the Nobel Committee – published an article in the Oslo daily newspaper Dagbladet accusing Keynes of distorting Wilson’s role at Versailles in The Economic Consequences of the Peace. He called Keynes’s depiction “a lie”, charging that Keynes had never attended the meetings he claimed to describe. The attack was harsh and personal.
Keilhau responded in the same newspaper, defending Keynes point by point. Worm Müller shot back. Over the following weeks, the two advisers engaged in an acrimonious fight in the pages of Dagbladet, a spectacle involving two men who were supposed to be discreet, impartial advisers to the Nobel Committee. To settle the matter for his 1924 report, Keilhau did something unusual: he sought evidence directly from two of the participants at Versailles, one who had served as a secretary and one as an interpreter, as well as from a meeting with Keynes in September 1924 in London. Keilhau concluded that while Keynes had perhaps overstated the regularity of his attendance, he had not fabricated his presence.
Ultimately, no Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to anyone in 1923 or 1924. Looking back, whatever the prescience and brilliance of Keynes’ 1919 book, it was a prediction of future conflict and war. If the Peace Prize was given to the most brilliant predictions of future conflict, rather than for (often imperfect) efforts to reduce and resolve conflict, the historical list of prize-winners would look rather different.
