Former University of Warwick graduate wins Nobel Prize in Economics

A GRADUATE of the University of Warwick is the joint winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Professor Oliver Hart, also an honorary graduate of the university, worked alongside Finnish academic Bengt Holmstrom. They were recognised for their work on contract theory.

Prof Hart’s research focused on the various contractual relationships which allow society to function – from employment contracts to credit contracts.

Currently the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Prof Hart gained a BA in Mathematics at King’s College, Cambridge in 1969, an MA in Economics at Warwick in 1972, and a PhD in Economics at Princeton University in 1974.

He then became a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge and a Professor at the London School of Economics. In 1984, he returned to the US, where he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and, since 1993, at Harvard University.

In 2012, Prof Hart was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Warwick, and is also an Honorary Professor in Warwick’s Department of Economics.

Prof Hart said his first reaction to being told he had won was to hug his wife and then wake up his younger son who was staying with him for the weekend, and then to his fellow Laureate.

“I think I woke at about 4:40 and was wondering whether it was getting too late for it to be this year, but then fortunately the phone rang,” he said.

He said contracts were an incredibly powerful way of thinking about parts of economics.

Although working separately, the two men developed tools to help identify whether public sector workers should receive fixed salaries or performance-based pay, and whether public service providers should be publicly or privately owned.

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