Oliver Hart (economist)

Oliver Hart
Oliver Hart at Nobel press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, December 2016
Born	Oliver Simon D'Arcy Hart (1948-10-09) October 9, 1948 (age 68) London, England
Residence	Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Nationality	British, American
Fields	Law and Economics
Institutions	Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology London School of Economics
Alma mater	King's College, Cambridge BA University of Warwick MA Princeton University PhD
Doctoral advisor	Michael Rothschild
Doctoral students	David S. Scharfstein Jeremy C. Stein Luigi Zingales Richard Holden
Notable awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2016)
Spouse	Rita B. Goldberg

Oliver Simon D'Arcy Hart (born 1948) is a British born economist and the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Together with Bengt R. Holmström, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2016.

Oliver Hart was born in Britain to Philip D'Arcy Hart, a medical researcher, and Ruth Meyer, a gynecologist. Both his parents were Jewish; his father was a member of the noble Montagu family; Oliver's great-grandfather was Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling.

Hart earned his BA in mathematics at King's College, Cambridge, in 1969 (where his contemporaries included the former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King), his MA in economics at the University of Warwick in 1972, and his PhD in economics at Princeton University in 1974. He was a fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and then a professor at the London School of Economics. In 1984, he returned to the U.S., where he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, since 1993, at Harvard University. He became the first Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics in 1997 and was chairman of the Harvard economics department from 2000 to 2003. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the Econometric Society, of the American Finance Association, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been president of the American Law and Economics Association and vice president of the American Economic Association, and has several honorary degrees. He is also a Visiting Centennial Professor in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics.