Social scientists Oliver Williamson, from Berkeley, and Elinor Ostrom, from the University of Indiana, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics earlier this morning. The pair’s work focused on how social relationships between competitors in the free market have measurable effects not accounted for in purely systematic analysis. Robert Shiller of Yale told the Times that this indicates the prize committee was focused on the credit crisis and the fact that most economists, unlike this pair, were looking at the capitalist system as purely a machine of self-interest. In other words, these two geniuses have been grappling with some of the same problems as the most recent American Nobel winner! Reaction hasn’t come pouring in yet, but we’re predicting that with these two American laureates, it’ll be, shall we say, different.
