Stockholm - The Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded Monday to US researchers Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced. Ostrom, born 1933, became the first woman to win the economics prize since it was created in 1968. The previous 62 winners were all men.
The Academy said their research had showed how "economic analysis can shed light on most forms of social organization."
Ostrom of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, was cited "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons," while Williamson of the University of California at Berkeley, California, was cited for "his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm."
The two laureates were to equally share the prize worth 10 million kronor (1.4 million dollars).
Ostrom's work indicated how economic transactions can - in addition to markets - take place in firms, associations, households and agencies.
Williamson, born 1932, had shown how businesses "serve as structures for conflict resolution," the Academy said.
The prize - formally called The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel - last year was awarded to Paul Krugman of the United States.
Citizens of the US have dominated the economics prize, which was not one of the orginal Nobel prizes endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
The economics prize like the Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature are handed over at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's 1896 death in San Remo, Italy.
The Nobel Prize for Peace is presented December 10 in Oslo, Norway.
