Oliver Hart

Oliver Hart is a British-American economist whose research on incomplete contracts and the allocation of control rights earned him the 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Incomplete Contracts: Contracts that leave some future actions or contingencies unspecified because they cannot be fully anticipated or described. This framework defines the problem Hart’s contract theory addresses.
Grossman–Hart Model: A model in which asset ownership allocates residual control rights and changes parties’ incentives to make relationship-specific investments. This model formalized Hart’s central account of ownership under incomplete contracts.
Sanford J. Grossman: An American economist known for research on information, markets, and the theory of the firm. Grossman and Hart jointly developed the property-rights approach to incomplete contracts.
Privatization: The transfer of ownership or operation of an organization or asset from public to private control. Hart’s work helps analyze how private ownership changes incentives when service contracts are incomplete.
2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: The economics prize awarded to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström for contributions to contract theory. The award recognized Hart’s work on incomplete contracts alongside Holmström’s research on incentives.
Property Rights Theory of the Firm: An economic theory explaining firms through ownership of assets and the control rights ownership provides. Hart developed this approach to explain how ownership affects bargaining when contracts are incomplete.
Relationship-Specific Investment: An investment whose value is substantially greater within a particular business relationship than in alternative uses. Hart’s framework explains how ownership affects incentives to make these investments before bargaining.
John H. Moore: A Scottish economist whose work includes influential research on incomplete contracts and the boundaries of firms. Moore and Hart extended the theory of the firm through joint work on asset ownership.
Public–Private Partnership: A long-term arrangement in which public and private organizations share responsibilities for providing infrastructure or services. These partnerships raise the ownership and control questions central to Hart’s contract theory.
Theory of the Firm: The study of why firms exist, how they are organized, and where their boundaries lie. Hart’s property-rights theory became a major modern explanation of firm organization.

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Jean TiroleRelated: Hart’s contract theory is closely related to the incentive problems studied by Tirole.