STOCKHOLM (AP) — American-born economists Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the Nobel memorial prize in economics on Monday for their work on models that have helped governments and central banks manage economic shocks, such as energy crises and inflation. The Royal Swedish Academy of Scienc es announced the winners in Stockholm, saying the two were being honored for work that has helped policymakers deal with economic fluctuations. “The laureates have helped us smooth out the economy’s peaks and troughs,” the academy said in a statement. Hall is affiliated with Stanford University in California, and Woodford with Columbia University in New York. Hall and Woodford set about coming up with an improved model that took into account how consumers and businesses actually made decisions about whether to invest and spend. The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes. Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, but it is always presented together with the others on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896. Nobel honors were announced last week in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization. ...read more read less