For the first time, a woman has won a share of the Nobel Prize for economics.
The 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics will be shared by Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson. Ostrom, professor of political science and professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, both at Indiana University at Bloomington, was honored for “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.” She is also the founding director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, at Arizona State University. Williamson, professor emeritus of business, economics and law at the University of California at Berkeley, was honored “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.”
This breaks a recent trend of awarding prizes on spec. One half expected the award to go to a PhD candidate with a really nifty dissertation proposal.
