Interdisciplinary backgrounds of the 2009 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics

The Chronicle of Higher Education has drawn attention to the interdisciplinary backgrounds of the 2009 recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. Both Oliver E. Williamson, a professor emeritus of business, economics, and law at the University of California at Berkeley, and Elinor Ostram, a professor of political science at Indiana University at Bloomington, have engaged social sciences beyond their respective disciplines throughout their careers. Williamson’s body of work has made important contributions to organizational sociology as well as legal theory, and in 1981 he published a major article in the American Journal of Sociology. While Ostram is not the first non-economist to be honored with the award, her background as a political scientist highlights the social sciences’ inherent capacity to be cross disciplinary – her political science research, described as “at base, sociological,” has offered innovative analysis of issues traditionally reserved for scholars of economics.

As one of the first institutions to call for and support interdisciplinary work (pdf) in the social sciences, the SSRC congratulates Professors Williamson and Ostram and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who selected them for this honor.

Read the full article here (subscription only).