Two academics of Harvard, MIT win Nobel in economics

Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom, the Harvard and MIT academics, were awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in economics on Monday.

They were recognised for their "contributions to contract theory" by the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, report news agencies.

Their theory shows how best to write contracts, the deals that bind together employers and their workers or companies and their customers.

Professor Hart, 68, was born in London. He studied at University College London, Cambridge University and Warwick University, all in England, before receiving his Ph.D. in 1974 from Princeton, and has been a professor of economics at Harvard since 1993.

Professor Holmstrom, 67, was born in Helsinki, Finland, received his Ph.D. in 1978 from Stanford and has been a professor of economics and management at M.I.T. since 1994. He previously taught at Northwestern and Yale.