(Photo: VNA)

The award for economics is the final instalment of this year's crop of Nobels that have seen prizes go to COVID-19 vaccine discoveries, atomic snapshots and "quantum dots" as well as to a Norwegian dramatist and an Iranian activist.

Goldin, who in 1990 became the first woman to be tenured at the Harvard economics department, is only the third woman to win the Nobel economics prize.

Goldin's 1990 book "Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women" was a hugely influential examination of the roots of wage inequality.