Stockholm, Oct 12 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The Nobel Prize for Economics for 2009 was awarded to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson. Elinor Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington. She is also the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University. She is a Ph.D. in Political Sciences.

Oliver Eaton Williamson was born in September 27, 1932 is a well-known author in the area of transaction cost economics. Oliver Williamson did his B.Sc. in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1955, M.B.A. from Stanford University in 1960, and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1963.

The 1932 born Oliver has held professorships in business administration, economics, and law at the University of California, Berkeley since long and is currently the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus at the prestigious Haas School of Business.


According to the Nobel Prize Selection Committee, “Both laureates have profoundly enhanced our learning of economic governance.” For Elinor, the committee said, ‘for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons’ and for Oliver, the committee said ‘for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm’

The 1933 born Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics since it was founded in 1968. She said that she would use the prize money for research purposes and will not use it for personal purposes.