In 1994, bequests to Northwestern University from the late Erwin Esser Nemmers, a former member of the Northwestern University faculty, and his brother, the late Frederic E. Nemmers, led to the establishment of four endowed professorships in the Kellogg School of Management, and biennial prizes in economics, mathematics, and more recently musical composition. The Nemmers family ran a church music publishing house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The prize in economics is named in honor of the Nemmers’ father.

The Nemmers’ hoped that their prizes would carry with them the prestige attached to the Nobel prizes. They are designed to recognize "work of lasting significance" and in particular, recognize "major contributions to new knowledge or the development of significant new modes of analysis."

Past winners of the Nemmers Prize in Economics are Peter Diamond, Thomas Sargent, Robert Aumann, Daniel McFadden, Edward Prescott, and Ariel Rubinstein. Professors Aumann, McFadden and Prescott were subsequently awarded The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

The Nemmers bequest is also supporting a two-day conference to mark the awarding of the 2007 prize to Lars Peter Hansen. Additional support for the 2007 conference is provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

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