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The 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was awarded this morning to Oliver Hart, the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and Bengt Holmström, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They were honored for their work on contracts. "Modern economies are held together by innumerable contracts. The new theoretical tools created by Hart and Holmström are valuable to the understanding of real-life contracts and institutions, as well as potential pitfalls in contract design," said the Nobel announcement.

The Nobel Prizes tweeted Hart's reaction this morning.

With the awards to Hart and Holmström, six professors at American universities have won Nobels this year (with the literature prize still to come later this week). All six were born outside the United States, five in Britain and one (Holmström) in Finland.