STOCKHOLM (AP) — This year’s Nobel Prize in economic sciences has been awarded to three U.S.-based economists “for research on banks and financial crises.”

The award to Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig was announced Monday by the Nobel panel at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

Nobel prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10.

Unlike the other prizes, the economics award wasn’t established in Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895 but by the Swedish central bank in his memory. The first winner was selected in 1969.