Two professors based in Cambridge are now Nobel Prize winners.

Harvard's Oliver Hart and MIT's Bengt Holmström were named today as recipients of the 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Hart and Holmström are being honored for their work on contract theory.

As I learned when I spoke to Holmström today, the award gives him one other thing in common with Paul Samuelson — the first American to win a Nobel in economics.