[by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:01.08]Two professors at American universities have won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. [00:08.56]They were honored for their work on business agreements [00:12.44]that affect billions of people worldwide: contracts. [00:17.96]"The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided [00:22.20]to award the Sveriges Richsbank Prize in Economic Sciences [00:27.72]in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2016 [00:32.76]to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom for their contributions to contract theory." [00:41.44]Goran Hansson, the Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences [00:48.00]announced the prize Monday. [00:50.52]Oliver Hart is a professor at Harvard University. [00:55.88]Bengt Holmstrom is at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or M.I.T. [01:04.20]The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said [01:07.88]the prize was awarded for work on the theory of contracts. [01:13.68]These agreements affect almost every part of modern life. [01:18.96]Insurance, loans, buying agreements, employment, property rights, [01:28.12]political constitutions and marriage are all kinds of contracts. [01:35.60]Hart and Holmstrom developed a theory for understanding how contracts work. [01:43.40]Their research has been used to design contracts. [01:47.88]It relates to contracts in private markets and in public policy. [01:55.52]Contracts are agreements between a principal and an agent. [02:00.28]One example of this relationship is the one between an employer and an employee. [02:08.56]The leader of a company and its shareholders also have a contractual agreement. [02:17.08]Hart and Holmstrom's work raised questions [02:20.64]about tying the pay of high-level officials to a company's current profits. [02:27.00]They found that performance-based pay might not be the best policy in some cases. [02:35.00]Doing so, may give a business leader an incentive [02:39.60]to make decisions that increase profits for a short period of time. [02:45.80]Those same decisions may harm the company over the long term. [02:53.40]The two also studied insurance contracts. [02:57.72]They argued that people may become careless if insurance companies fully replaced things [03:05.24]that are damaged in an accident, such as cars. [03:09.48]So, insurance companies often have contract holders pay a deductible toward repair. [03:19.28]Insurers also limit what they are willing pay for or replace in many cases. [03:27.48]Holmstrom worked with others to describe how contracts [03:33.56]meant to improve one kind of performance can hurt overall job performance. [03:41.56]For example, if teacher pay is tied to student test scores [03:47.56]then many other parts of a teacher's job could be negatively affected. [03:54.76]Hart and Holmstrom worked together to show that contracts cannot describe every part of a job. [04:03.84]Contracts are in some ways always incomplete. [04:09.36]The two said contracts cannot predict every need and requirement in the future. [04:16.80]Holmstrom researched the subject for many years. [04:22.40]He advised that contracts should make clear what needs to be done [04:28.00]to deal with future disagreements between parties rather than center on specific requirements. [04:37.16]The new Nobel prize winners also examined [04:40.80]whether some jobs are better done by government or private industry. [04:47.20]In 1997, Hart worked with others in a study [04:51.84]that showed the incentive to reduce costs is usually stronger among private contractors. [04:59.92]The research called into question the policy of some privately run public services, like prisons. [05:10.48]The Nobel committee praised Hart and Holmstrom for providing the tools to think about [05:18.04]and design better contracts in many different fields. [05:23.96]Oliver Hart was born in London. [05:28.04]He spent much of his professional life at American universities. [05:33.48]Co-winner Bengt Holmstrom was born in Helsinki, Finland. [05:39.64]He also spent most of his career in the United States. [05:44.68]The two have been friends for years. [05:48.72]The Nobel Prize committee's twitter account Tweeted Hart's reaction: [05:54.69]The two will share the economics prize worth $924,000. [06:02.76]It is the only Nobel prize not established by Alfred Nobel. [06:09.08]Sweden's central bank established the prize in his honor. [06:14.44]The Nobel prize for literature will be announced Thursday. [06:21.36]I'm Mario Ritter. [06:22.88]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM