Oliver Simon D'Arcy Hart (born October 9, 1948) is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

-born

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

economist, currently the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Together with

Bengt R. Holmström Bengt may refer to: People In arts, entertainment and media Actors * Bengt Djurberg (1898–1941), Swedish actor and singer * Bengt Ekerot (1920–1971), Swedish actor and director * Bengt Eklund (1925–1998), Swedish actor * Bengt Logardt (1914 ...

, he received the

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...

in 2016.

Biography

Oliver Hart was born in Britain to

Philip D'Arcy Hart Philip Montagu D'Arcy Hart, CBE (25 June 1900 – 30 July 2006) was a seminal British medical researcher and pioneer in tuberculosis treatment. Personal life Philip D'Arcy Hart was the grandson of Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling. He was ...

, a medical researcher, and Ruth Meyer, a gynecologist. Both his parents were

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

; his father was a member of the Montagu family; Oliver's great-grandfather was

Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling (21 December 1832 – 12 January 1911), was a British banker who founded the bank of Samuel Montagu & Co. He was a philanthropist and Liberal Party (UK), Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons of ...

. Hart earned his B.A. in mathematics at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

, in 1969 (where his contemporaries included the former

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

Governor Mervyn King), his M.A. in economics at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

in 1972, and his Ph.D. in economics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 1974. He completed his doctoral dissertation, titled "Essays in the economics of uncertainty", under the supervision of

Michael Rothschild Michael Rothschild (born August 2, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, United States) is an American economist; he is visiting professor at the Department of Economics of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and a former dean at Princeton. ...

. He was a Lecturer in Economics at

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the an ...

, a fellow at

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establish ...

, and then a professor at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

. In 1984, he returned to the U.S., where he taught at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and, since 1993, at

. He became the first Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics in 1997 and was chairman of the Harvard economics department from 2000 to 2003. He is a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

, of the

Econometric Society The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...

, of the

American Finance Association The American Finance Association (AFA) is an academic organization whose focus is the study and promotion of knowledge of financial economics. It was formed in 1939. Its main publication, the ''Journal of Finance'', was first published in 1946. ...

, a corresponding fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

, and a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. He has been president of the

American Law and Economics Association The American Law and Economics Association (ALEA), a United States organization founded in 1991, is focused on the advancement of economic understanding of law, and related areas of public policy and regulation. It promotes research in law and econo ...

and vice president of the American Economic Association, and has several honorary degrees. In 2016, Hart won the Nobel Prize in Economics with

Bengt Holmström Bengt Robert Holmström (born 18 April 1949) is a Finnish economist who is currently Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together with Oliver Hart, he received the Central Bank of S ...

for their work on

contract theory From a legal point of view, a contract is an institutional arrangement for the way in which resources flow, which defines the various relationships between the parties to a transaction or limits the rights and obligations of the parties. From an ...

, including his work on how ownership should be allocated and when contracting is beneficial over ownership.

Academics

Hart is an expert on

theory of the firm The theory of the firm consists of a number of economic theories that explain and predict the nature of the firm, company, or corporation, including its existence, behaviour, structure, and relationship to the market. Firms are key drivers in econ ...

corporate finance Corporate finance is the area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, the capital structure of corporations, the actions that managers take to increase the Value investing, value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and anal ...

, and

law and economics Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law, which emerged primarily from scholars of the Chicago school of economics. Economic concepts are used to explain the effects of laws ...

. His research centers on the roles that ownership structure and contractual arrangements play in the governance and boundaries of corporations. His research has emphasized the importance of contractual incompleteness — the inability of parties to contract on every contingency. 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.

Personal life

Hart is an American citizen. He is married to Rita B. Goldberg, a Harvard literature professor and author of the second-generation Holocaust memoir ''Motherland: Growing Up With the Holocaust''. They have two sons and two grandsons.

Books

* ''Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure'' (Oxford University Press, 1995).

Selected articles

*"On the Optimality of Equilibrium when the Market Structure is Incomplete", Journal of Economic Theory, December 1975, 418–443 * "Takeover Bids, the Free-rider problem, and the Theory of the Corporation" (with

Sanford J. Grossman Sanford "Sandy" Jay Grossman (born July 21, 1953) is an American economist and hedge fund manager specializing in quantitative finance. Grossman’s research has spanned the analysis of information in securities markets, corporate structure, prop ...

), Bell Journal of Economics, Spring 1980, 42–64 * "An Analysis of the

principal–agent problem The principal–agent problem refers to the conflict in interests and priorities that arises when one person or entity (the "agent") takes actions on behalf of another person or entity (the " principal"). The problem worsens when there is a gre ...

" (with Sanford J. Grossman), ''

Econometrica ''Econometrica'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics, publishing articles in many areas of economics, especially econometrics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Econometric Society. The current editor-in-chief is Gui ...

'' (January 1983) 7–46. * "The Market Mechanism as an Incentive Scheme," Bell Journal of Economics, 14 (Autumn 1983) 366-82. *"The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration" (with Sanford J. Grossman), Journal of Political Economy, August 1986, 691–719. *"One Share-One vote and the Market for Corporate Control" (with Sanford J. Grossman), Journal of Financial Economics, 1988 * "Incomplete Contracts and Renegotiation" (with

John Hardman Moore John Halstead Hardman Moore CBE FBA FRSE (born 7 May 1954) is an economic theorist. He was appointed George Watson's and Daniel Stewart's Chair of Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh School of Economics in 2000. In 2018 he was appoi ...

), ''Econometrica'' 56(4) (July 1988). * "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm" (with John Hardman Moore), ''Journal of Political Economy'' 98(6) (1990). * " A Theory of Debt Based on the Inalienability of Human Capital " (with John Hardman Moore), Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1994, 841–879 * "The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons" (with Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny), ''

Quarterly Journal of Economics ''The Quarterly Journal of Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Oxford University Press for the Harvard University Department of Economics. Its current editors-in-chief are Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan ...

'' 112(4) (1997) 1126–61. * "Contracts as Reference Points" (with John Hardman Moore), Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2008,1–48.

Notes

References

External links

Oliver Hart's home page at Harvard
* including the Prize Lecture ''Incomplete Contracts and Control'' , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Hart, Oliver 1948 births Living people Nobel laureates in Economics British Nobel laureates American Nobel laureates Alumni of King's College, Cambridge American people of English-Jewish descent British economists Law and economics scholars British Jews Information economists Alumni of the University of Warwick Princeton University alumni Harvard University faculty Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge Fellows of the Econometric Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Academics of the London School of Economics 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy Academics from London Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture speakers