Oliver Hart – Oliver Hart Biography

Oliver Simon D’Arcy Hart is a British-born American economist who, along with Bengt Holmström, was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to contract theory. His pioneering research into what came to be known as “incomplete contracts“, in which the rights and responsibilities of the contracting parties are not fully valued for all eventualities (because not all eventualities can be foreseen), influenced the design of” rudimentary “alternative hedging contracts, for example, the allocation of property rights between companies and the relationship between managers and investors in privately owned companies His work also helped to rationalize decisions about whether certain public services should be contracted privately or by the government.

Hart He was born on October 9, 1948 in London; he studied mathematics at Kings College London and the University of Cambridge (BA, 1969) and economics at the University of Warwick (MA, 1972) and Princeton University (Ph.D., 1974). He served as Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and other institutions before joining the faculty of the London School of Economics (LSE) as Professor of Economics in 1981. He was later Professor and Visiting Professor of Economics at the Institute of Massachusetts Technology (MIT) and LSE. He joined the Department of Economics at Harvard University in 1993, becoming the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics in 1997.

The innovative work of Hart explored the idea that unforeseen eventualities should be dealt with with optimal allocation of control, decision-making, or property rights between contracting parties in different circumstances. His study of non-contractual investment decisions by private contractors providing public services found that the incentive to cut costs at the expense of quality was often too strong, resulting in inefficiency, underperformance, or failure to meet the targets. public policy objectives. Research conducted by Hart and his colleagues in 1997 generally supported the view that prisons should be run by the government, while services such as garbage collection and weapons production should be contracted out privately.

The publications of Hart they include Companies, Contracts and Financial Structure (1995) and numerous academic works. He has applied his theoretical work on companies in two legal cases, acting as a government expert (Black and Decker v. USA and WFC Holdings Corp. (Wells Fargo) v. USA). He is a member of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, the American Finance Association, and the National Academy of Sciences; he has several honorary titles. He has been President of the American Economic and Law Association and Vice President of the American Economic Association.