Princeton University economist Angus Deaton was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics Monday morning âfor his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.â Much of Deatonâs work focuses on the relationship between income and consumption, and he coined the Deaton Paradox, which looks at how the two are related. âDeatonâs focus on household surveys has helped transform development economics from a theoretical field based on aggregate data to an empirical field based on detailed individual data,â the committee said.