Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am sure that my first thought, when I received the call telling me that I would receive the Prize in Economic Sciences, was the same as the first thought of many previous recipients – namely, to wonder which of my colleagues had arranged this elaborate practical joke.

Eventually, however, the awesome reality sank in – and what I felt was not pride but a sense of astonished humility.

My thanks go out, in this wonderful moment, to those who made it possible – to my wife, to my parents, and, not least, to my colleagues around the world.

The great economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote of the foolish things a man thinking alone can temporarily come to believe. Fortunately, I did not have to think alone: the creation of the modern theory of international trade and economic geography was very much a collective effort. The new ideas were hammered out over years of conferences and correspondence involving men and women from many countries. This group of men and women constituted one of history’s great invisible colleges, and together we made a revolution in the way economists think about the most fundamental aspects of the global economy.

So let me express my deepest gratitude to the Economics Prize Committee for recognizing this work, and for honoring my own part in the achievement. It’s an honor that I will spend the rest of my life trying to live up to. Thank you.