It has been weeks since the prize announcement, and plaudits are long overdue: hearty congratulations to Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton and Dacher Keltner, who discovered that upper-class people are more likely to steal candy from children. They are worthy winners of the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in economics.

I have praised the Ig Nobel Prizes before: they are the irreverent alternative to the Nobel Prizes, this year awarded for achievements such as research into splash-free urinals, burying and later disinterring 1,000 pairs of underpants to assess soil health in various countries and discovering that babies smell lovely to their parents, but teenagers do not. They refresh parts of the scientific discourse that the Nobel Prize does not reach. In the case of the economics prize, the Nobel memorial is all very well, but for a shortcut to understanding what makes economists tick, it’s the Ig Nobel Prize every time.