When Alfred Nobel died in 1896, his will established prizes in five fields: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. Economics was not on the list. Yet for over fifty years, the prize that economists receive every October has been widely called the Nobel Prize in Economics.

It is not, technically, a Nobel Prize.

The award was created in 1968 by Sveriges Riksbank — the central bank of Sweden — to celebrate the bank's 300th anniversary. Its full official name is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The Riksbank donated a permanent endowment to the Nobel Foundation and was granted permission to attach the Nobel name to the new prize. The first award was given in 1969 to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen for the development of econometrics.

Members of the Nobel family have publicly objected on multiple occasions. Peter Nobel, a great-great-nephew of Alfred and a human rights lawyer, has called it a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation. The argument is that the prize was a sophisticated piece of branding — using the Nobel name to elevate economics from a social science to something with the prestige and authority of physics or chemistry.

Whatever its origins, the Riksbank prize follows the same calendar, the same ceremony in Stockholm, and the same prize amount as the genuine Nobel categories. Most newspapers, dictionaries, and even the Nobel Foundation's own website refer to it casually as the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Whether you accept that depends on whether branding can create a Nobel — or whether the original five categories, as Alfred specified, were always meant to be the only ones.