The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2014 to Jean Tirole “for his analysis of market power and regulation”.

Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time. He has made important theoretical research contributions in a number of areas, but most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms.

Many industries are dominated by a small number of large firms or a single monopoly. Left unregulated, such markets often produce socially undesirable results – prices higher than those motivated by costs, or unproductive firms that survive by blocking the entry of new and more productive ones.

From the mid-1980s and onwards, Jean Tirole has breathed new life into research on such market failures. His analysis of firms with market power provides a unified theory with a strong bearing on central policy questions: how should the government deal with mergers or cartels, and how should it regulate monopolies? (Press Release Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)

Find more information about Jean Tirole and the Nobel Prize here.

Some of Jean Tirole’s books are now available online via findit.lu and a-z.lu:

>> Jean Tirole’s ebooks in a-z.lu

>> Direct link to Ebsco ebooks