In a star-studded handover led by genuine Nobel Laureates, researchers Dr. Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner were awarded the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics. 

Researchers Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner were awarded the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics. The 36th First Annual ceremony made its European debut in Zurich on September 3, 2026, introducing ten new winners spanning multiple fields, whose work makes people “laugh, then think.”

The 2019 Nobel Laureate Esther Duflo personally handed the economics prize to Piff, who accepted on behalf of his team before a live audience of 1,500. Duflo was joined on stage by fellow Nobel Economics Laureate Abhijit Banerjee, as well as Nobel laureates and leading names in other disciplines.

The winning team, consisting of researchers from the fields of social psychology, behavioural economics and business ethics, earned the accolade for their PNAS paper proving that higher social class consistently correlates with increased unethical behavior. 

Across seven observational and laboratory studies, the researchers demonstrated that wealthier individuals were more likely to:

• Cut off pedestrians and drivers: Luxury vehicle owners significantly more often failed to yield at crosswalks and intersections.
• Steal candy from kids: Upper-class lab participants took far more sweets from a jar explicitly marked as reserved for children in an adjoining room.
• Deceive for profit: Wealthier subjects showed a higher tendency to lie during simulated job negotiations and report fake high scores on a game to win cash.

The ceremony was, as usual, vibrant,  including the audience throwing over a thousand paper planes, a four-piece alphorn orchestra, and a mini-opera about fungi.

You can see the ceremony in full on the Improbable Research website, which awards the Ig Nobels (the economics prize starts just after the one hour mark (1:00:30).

Find out more about the winning researchers:
Paul Piff (personal website)
Stephan Cote (University of Toronto profile page)
R. Mendoza-Denton (UC Berkeley profile page)
Dacher Kelter (UC Berkeley profile page)