by Laura Conaway

Good morning, and happy holiday. We're off for Columbus Day, but we do have one dollop of news for you.

Two American professors are sharing the 2009 Nobel prize for economics. Oliver Williamson of U.C. Berkeley and Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University were cited for their work analyzing economic governance — the rules of the game.

The Nobel academy noted Williamson's argument that:

"[L]arge private corporations exist primarily because they are efficient. They are established because they make owners, workers, suppliers, and customers better off than they would be under alternative institutional arrangements

Williamson has argued that it's better to regulate the behavior of large corporations than it is to try limiting their size.

Ostrom is the first woman to win for economics since the prize was founded in 1968. She has spent her career studying the relationships between people and natural resources. From the Nobel academy:

"Elinor Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories."