Oliver Hart (Harvard)
Hart is a British-born American economist, currently the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Together with Bengt R. Holmström, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2016.
Hart is an expert on contract theory, theory of the firm, corporate finance, and law and economics. His research centers on the roles that ownership structure and contractual arrangements play in the governance and boundaries of corporations. He has used his theoretical work on firms in two legal cases as a government expert (Black and Decker v. U.S.A. and WFC Holdings Corp. (Wells Fargo) v. U.S.A.) where companies claimed tax related benefits as a result from selling some of their business. The government used Hart’s research to claim that because the companies retained control of the sold assets, they could not lay claim to the tax benefits.
John C. Harsányi Centenary Lecture
John Charles Harsányi was born in Budapest in 1920. At his parents’ will he first studied pharmacology in Lyon and then – because of the war – in Budapest. After the war he turned to his preferred subjects obtaining his PhD in philosophy and sociology in 1947 at the University of Budapest. In 1950 he flew to Austria eventually settling in Australia. It was here he started studying economics eventually obtaining a second PhD with Arrow in Stanford. He is now best know for his contributions to the study of games with incomplete information, the so-called Bayesean games. For his work, he was a co-recipient of the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. A special lecture is held to commemorate his centennary.
