Two Americans, British-Cypriot share 2010 Economics Nobel
11 Oct 2010
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has selected two Americans and a British-Cypriot for the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics, for their work focusing on problems like unemployment.
US professors Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen and British-Cypriot citizen Christopher Pissarides will share `The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences' prize money of 10 million Swedish kroner ($1.5 million).
Peter A. Diamond, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, US, Dale T Mortensen, professor at the Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, US and Christopher A Pissarides, professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, won the Economics Nobel "for their analysis of markets with search frictions."
They analysed why so many people remained unemployed at a time when there are a large number of job openings and tried to find how economic policy affect unemployment.
"This year's Laureates have developed a theory which can be used to answer these questions. This theory is also applicable to markets other than the labor market," the Nobel Committee said in its release.
Since buyers and sellers do not always make contact with one another immediately in any market, there arises a mismatch of job selection and employee selection. Since the search process requires time and resources, it creates frictions in the market, the release noted.