Forecasting Nobel laureates is a thankless exercise but that hasn’t stopped the predictions. This is Nobel week: Monday was medicine, Tuesday physics and Wednesday chemistry. Literature and peace follow today and Friday, respectively. And on Monday, Oct. 14, the spotlight turns to economics.

Here are names — some perennials on Nobel shortlists — that economists say are contenders for what many consider the field’s highest honor.

If the award is for work on financial crises, banks, liquidity and regulation, Douglas Diamond of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Philip Dybvig, of the Olin School of Business at Washington University, St. Louis, are headliners. In 1983, the pair wrote a seminal paper spelling out why bank runs happen. The authors explained that deposit insurance could reassure customers and keep them from panicking and pulling their money out en masse.

Another name cited for finance and regulation is Jean Tirole, of the Toulouse School of Economics, who has done work on industrial organizations, antitrust and the regulation of corporations. Other potential winners in this area include Bengt Holstrom, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Oliver Hart, of Harvard University; Gary Gorton, of the Yale School of Management and Paul R. Milgrom of Stanford University. Mr. Milgrom’s areas of research include auctions, akin to last year’s laureates, Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley. Messrs. Roth and Shapley worked, separately, on how markets, such as the system for pairing medical residents with hospitals, come up with matches.