STOCKHOLM -- The current financial crisis is raising questions about the legacy of the Nobel economics award, with prized liberal market theories being blamed for the mess and some experts saying the turmoil will in future push the prize in a new direction.

"I think the crisis is leading to a fundamental change in the philosophy. We've seen that unfettered markets can be a disaster," Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor who himself won the 2001 Nobel Economics Prize, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The prize has since it was first awarded in 1969 gone to economists working in a wide range of areas, from macroeconomics and microeconomics to cross-genre research blurring the borders between economics and fields like political science and psychology.

Yet the prize committee has been criticized in the past for focusing heavily on the neoclassical approach to economics, which in political terms is often equated with the market liberalism dominating mainstream economics today.

The theories of such Nobel laureates as Milton Friedman, who won the prize in 1976 and whose ideas helped power a conservative policy revolution, have increasingly been accused of helping to pave the way for the current market mess.

With their unwavering belief in the efficiency of the private sector and the rationality of markets that are best left untouched by government intervention and regulations, such economic theories deserve a share of the blame for the financial sector meltdowns on view today, critics say.

"Recent events provide what you might call the meat, the causal empirical verification that markets don't work on their own very well," said Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist whose harsh criticism of the bank's policies led to his resignation in 2000.

Out of the 58 people who have won the Nobel Economics Prize, 40, or 69 percent, have been US citizens, while more than 70 percent worked at US universities when they received their award.

The University of Chicago, which gave its name to the Friedmanesque "Chicago School" of free-market thinking, is especially heavily represented, with 25 laureates having some affiliation to the school, 10 of whom were faculty members.

"There was a period when there was a joke about a Stockholm-Chicago express," Stiglitz said, referring to the fact that the Nobel Economics Prize is awarded in the Swedish capital.

Prize committee chairman Bertil Holmlund disagreed, insisting that "if you look at the prize winners' political tendencies I think it has been very varied."

"Some are very clearly conservative or to the right, while others are obviously to the left, or at least in the middle of the spectrum," he told AFP.

Paul Sjoeblom, a historian and economics expert at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, also stressed that the prize committee had given the prestigious award to "a good mix" of different fields, but said "the neoclassisists are the most important school without a doubt."

"They have a huge influence, not only when it comes to the prize but also when it comes to university curricula and who has influence on political decisions" worldwide, he told AFP.

As the US Congress, with world governments hot on its heels, scrambled to try to prevent the entire financial sector from going belly-up, observers were saying the Nobel prize committee will in future likely shift its focus further away from the laissez-faire approach.

"This financial crisis could lead to an about face in the market...I can't believe this wouldn't affect the [Nobel] prize," Sjoeblom said.

Haakan Frisen, the chief analyst at the Swedish SEB bank, agreed.

"There is still interesting research being done in that area [neoclassical market liberalism], but it is reasonable to think there might be some kind of backlash," he told AFP.

"I do think this will open the prize up to new areas," he said, pointing out that there could be renewed interest in macroeconomical stabilization questions, more focus on chaos theory, as well as on research linked to specific sectors "like the interaction between the credit markets and social economics."

Both Sjoeblom and Stiglitz also said they expected the Nobel to veer from its beaten path, singling out the new field of ecological economics as worthy of the award.

Holmlund meanwhile insisted the financial crisis would have no impact on this year's decision, to be announced on October 13.

"There will definitely not be any effect in the short term," he told AFP.

"But of course there is a connection between societal developments and research and thereby also prizes. So if the financial problems create new research about financial stability then maybe that will be viewed as worthy of a prize sometime in the future," he said.