Kydland, who shares the award with Edward C Prescott, a professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, was conducting a lecture at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (Norges Handelshøyskole) in Bergen when news of his award broke.
"I'm of course delighted to have won the Nobel Prize," Kydland told news bureau NTB. "It's the greatest recognition anyone can have, there's no doubt about that."
Kydland and Prescott received the award for their work showing that the driving forces behind business cycle fluctuations and the design of economic policy are key areas in macroeconomic research.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize every year, said Kydland and Prescott made "fundamental contributions" not only to macroeconomic analysis, but also to the practice of monetary and fiscal policy in many countries.
Kydland is on the faculty at Handelshøyskole in Bergen at but also teaches at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and at the University of Southern California at Santa Barbara.
Only two other Norwegian economists have won the prize earlier, Ragnar Frisch and Trygve Haavelmo.
