NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Robert Engle of the United States and Britain's Clive Granger have won this year's Nobel prize in economics.

Robert Engle, New York University professor, is one of two winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize for economics.

The economists won the award for their use of statistical methods for analyzing economic data, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Wednesday.

"This year's Laureates devised new statistical methods for dealing with two key properties of many economic time series," the academy said in its citation for the prize, worth about $1.3 million.

Engle, born in 1942 in Syracuse, N.Y., teaches at New York University.

"His ... models have become indispensable tools not only for researchers but also for analysts on financial markets, who use them in asset pricing and in evaluating portfolio risk," the academy said in a statement announcing the awards.

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Granger, born in 1934 in Wales, is a professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego. The academy said his work was used in studying "the relations between wealth and consumption, exchange rates and price levels, and short- and long-term interest rates."

The economics award was not among the original prizes for chemistry, physics, literature, medicine and peace founded by the inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, in his will in 1895.

It was instituted by Sweden's central bank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969.