Bengt Holmstr?m and Oliver Hart, two academics who developed modern ways to think about writing contracts in areas as diverse as car insurance, bonuses for chief executives and the provision of public services, have won the 2016 Nobel Prize for economics.
Professor Hart, a Briton based at Harvard University, and Professor Holmstr?m, a Finn who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, share the $925,000 award from the Swedish Riksbank in memory of Alfred Nobel, for their “contribution to contract theory” in the 1970s and 1980s.
Their work does not prescribe what a good contract is, since that depends on circumstances, but instead helps parties think clearly about important design issues.