The Faces of Today's Laureates

From left, Roger B. Myerson, Eric S. Maskin and Leonid Hurwicz.

The NY Times has a good article on today's Nobel Prize winners, including these pictures of all three. For some reason, they all look happy:

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded to three American economists today for creating and developing a sophisticated explanation of the interaction among individuals, markets and institutions.

Their work, called mechanism design theory, has influenced thinking on a wide range of problems in economics and political science, from the design of government bond auctions to patent systems to voting procedures.

The institutional focus of this year’s laureates, economists say, is an important contribution. “Economists’ most lasting influence comes from the design of institutions,” said Robert J. Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University. “It is these mechanisms we use day to day that really matter to our lives.”

The three economists will share the prize money, 10 million Swedish kronor, or about $1.56 million. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was not one of the five original prizes — physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace — that Alfred Nobel specified in his will, and were first awarded in 1901. The first economics prize was awarded in 1969.

See my two previous posts on the world's newest Nobel Laureates:

• Explaining Today's Nobel Prize to Grandma
• Nobel Prize Goes to Hurwicz, Maskin, and Myerson

(HT to Whitney Little for forwarding this article to me.)