Jean Tirole MIT PhD'81 wins 2014 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
SHASS alumnus, former faculty member, and current Visiting Professor lauded for framework for regulating dominant firms in imperfect markets.

                                                                                              Photocredit: MaxPPP/LaPresse

MIT News Story by Peter Dizikes
Cambridge, 13 October 2014


Jean Tirole PhD ’81, a scholar whose longstanding ties to MIT include service on the economics faculty from 1984 to 1991, has been award the 2014 Nobel Prize in economic sciences for his work on the behavior and regulation of powerful firms.

Research by Tirole, 61, now a professor of economics at the University of Toulouse in his native France, has highlighted the need for regulation to be tailored to individual industries, while creating a general framework for understanding the nuances of regulation across industries.

Tirole received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1981 under the supervision of Eric Maskin, a former MIT professor (now at Harvard University) who was himself a winner of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2007.

Tirole remains an MIT faculty affiliate as the Annual Visiting Professor of Economics in MIT’s Department of Economics. He has co-authored papers with a number of members of the MIT economics faculty, including Olivier Blanchard, Jerry Hausman, Bengt Holmstrom, and Paul Joskow. Tirole and Holmstrom co-authored a 2011 book about liquidity in markets, “Inside and Outside Liquidity.” 

Full Story at MIT News